Atlantic Puffin
Fratercula arctica
The seabird with a striped orange beak that can carry a dozen fish at once.
Puffins spend most of the year far out on the North Atlantic, and come ashore in spring to breed on grassy cliffs and islands. In summer the beak glows orange, red and yellow, and the legs turn bright orange too. A puffin catches small fish underwater, flying along with its wings, and can hold lots of them in its beak at the same time. Then it flies home to a burrow with its catch for one hungry chick.
On the conservation status
Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (assessed in 2018), with about 12 to 14 million adults. Numbers are falling fast in Europe, where most puffins live. In the UK about a quarter fewer puffins were counted in 2023 than 20 years before.
- Length
- 25–33 cm (10–13 in)
- Wingspan
- 47–63 cm (18–25 in)
- Weight
- 310–550 g (11–19 oz)
- Dives down to
- Record 68 m (220 ft)
- Diet
- Sand eels, herring, capelin and other small fish
- Eggs
- One, hatching after 5–6 weeks
The good stuff.
A beak for the summer
The bright beak is mostly for the breeding season. Outside it, the bill turns duller, the legs go yellow, and the face and belly fade to grey.
A dozen fish at a time
A puffin can fly home with around a dozen small fish lined up in its bill. It holds them in place with its tongue against rows of small spikes on the roof of its mouth, so it can open its beak to catch another one.
Flying underwater
To hunt, a puffin dives and flaps its wings to swim, steering with its webbed feet. It usually stays above 60 m, though one was recorded at 68 m, and it can stay under for up to a minute.
A very busy flier
In the air, puffins flap their wings up to about 400 times a minute. Their small wings are built for swimming, so flying takes a lot of work.
Home is a burrow
Puffins dig a tunnel with their beaks and claws, or move into an old rabbit hole or a gap between rocks. At the end they lay a single egg and look after it together.
The puffling's night flight
A chick, called a puffling, stays in the burrow for around six weeks. Then it leaves at night and heads straight out to sea, where it will stay for years before coming back to breed.
Wait, really?
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Puffins return to the same colony year after year, and often to the same mate and the same burrow.
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In the 1970s, scientists in Maine moved young puffins to Eastern Egg Rock and put out wooden puffin decoys. The island now has nesting puffins again.
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They're sometimes nicknamed the clown of the sea and the sea parrot.
What it sounds like
Mostly quiet. At the colony they make low, growling calls.
We haven't found a recording we're allowed to share yet, so for now this one is a description.
Where you might see one
Iceland, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the islands off Maine. They're ashore from spring to late summer, and out at sea the rest of the year.
The trouble
- Fewer small fish, like sand eels, as the sea warms
- Overfishing of the fish puffins eat
- Rats, cats and other animals brought to nesting islands
- Plastic and other rubbish in the sea
One real thing
If you visit a puffin colony, stay on the marked paths: you could step on a burrow without knowing it. And if you eat fish, ask for kinds that are caught in ways that leave enough for seabirds.
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