![]() Range mass 700 to 840 g 24.67 to 29.60 ozĭuring the period prior to egg laying, large groups of puffins congregate off-shore from their nesting colony and engage in intense courtships and frequent copulations.Juvenile puffins resemble winter adults, but with a grey-brown breast, white belly, and a shallow, brown bill. Their legs and feet are red or orange-red throughout the year. When breeding ends in the early summer, puffins lose their plumes, the bright colors of the bill turn to a dull reddish-brown,and the belly is speckled with some pale brown flecks. ![]() The bill is mostly bright red, with yellow and sometimes green markings. During this time they develop a brownish-black body, with some white feathers lining the underside of the wing, a white face and glossy, yellow plumes above and behind eye. In the winter, as puffins prepare for spring breeding, their colors become more decorative, presumably to attract mates. There is also a difference in size between the sexes as male birds tend to be slightly larger than females. Size varies a little from location to location: western Pacific animals tend to be a little larger than eastern ones. (Paul 1994, Gaston 1998, Jewett 1953)įratercula cirrhata is similar in size to crows, with an average length of 15 inches, and a 15 inch wingspan. In highly populated colonies, the burrows of two or three of the animals sometimes run together. Their burrows are typically two to six feet long, and four to six inches in diameter. They prefer secluded areas where some protection is offered by their surroundings. Their stubby wings make it difficult for them to take flight from water or land without help. They prefer high places that allow them to swoop down and gain momentum. In more rocky areas, puffins build their nests in the rock and on cliff faces. ![]() They require shores with steep, grassy, sloping land with soil that allows them to burrow. (Gaston 1998)Īlthough puffins spend a majority of the year on the ocean, they build their nests on the shores of islands and coastal regions. Instead they come beak to beak and click clack their beaks with each other.Tufted puffins are Northern Pacific sea birds that spend a majority of the year over the Pacific Ocean, but nest along coastlines from lower California to Alaska, and across the ocean from Japan to the shores of northeastern Asia. Clacking Communication: I was expecting the Puffins to be really noisy and chatty but they barely make any noise at all! They will make a low growling sound to ward off wayward Puffins who try to enter their burrow, but otherwise they are almost completely silent.When the Pufflings have hatched and flown, the coloured parts fall off and don’t grow back until next season! Breaking Beaks: The rainbow coloured sections of a Puffin’s beak are only there for breeding season.Seeing the sand eels in the beak is the first sign that pufflings have started to hatch BUT when they are nesting Puffins will return to their burrow with a beak full of sand eels from the day their Puffling hatches. For most of the year, they eat while they are out and about at sea. Sand Eel signals: Puffins eat sand eels.How Puffins know which mate, and which burrow, even after 8-9 months alone at sea is a mystery that scientists are still exploring. They also use the same burrow every year. Puffins for life: Puffins are romantics, they mate with the same partner every year for their whole lives.Puffin Poo: Puffin pooing is incredible! They do a ducking and reversing motion before squirting a seriously disgusting liquid poo straight into their burrows! Interestingly, they do this on purpose because it scent marks their burrow, and leaves enough space between their “toilet area” and their nest for any poo to be wiped clean while they waddle.Hopefully this will mean that you can get a feel for life on Skomer island too. I took a video diary while I was there (I will be adding more episodes here over the coming weeks), to try and capture some of the things that I saw and found amazing. We watched Puffins burrowing, preening, communicating, feeding, flying and landing (which is hilarious!) and pooing which is astonishing! This makes it even more magical as you can sit on a path and become immersed in their weird and wonderful lives. There are literally hundreds of thousands of seabirds on Skomer and they busily go about feeding, mating and nesting with barely a look in your direction. It quickly became clear that the island belongs to the animals, we were in their territory, but they rule the roost. There are currently 30,000 Puffins nesting on Skomer Island, that’s one of the biggest Puffin colonies in Europe.
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