Atlantic puffins

Atlantic puffins are birds that live at sea most of their lives. They fly through the air like most birds, but they also "fly" through the water, using their wings as paddles. As they swim, they use their webbed feet to steer, much as a boat uses a rudder.Puffins eat small fish—such as sand eels and herring—which they hunt underwater. They generally stay underwater for 30 seconds or less, but are able to stay down for up to a minute and dive 200 feet (61 meters) deep.Well adapted for their home in the water, puffins are also speedy in the air. They flap their wings up to 400 times a minute, speeding along in the air at 55 miles (88 kilometers) an hour—as fast as a car on a highway. (How many times can you flap your arms in one minute?)

In the spring and summer, thousands of puffins gather in colonies on the coasts and islands of the North Atlantic Ocean. Pairs of puffins often become mates for life, finding each other at their breeding colony year after year. The pair often uses the same burrow they

used the year before.Puffin nesting sites are often on steep, rocky cliffs, where the birds and their eggs are safer from predators. The birds nest in burrows in the ground or in a sheltered area among
rocks. To dig a burrow, male and female puffins use their beaks to cut into the dirt and then, like dogs, use their feet to move the dirt out behind them. A burrow is about three feet (91 centimeters) long.

The birds line their nest, located at the end of the burrow, with grasses, seaweed, and feathers. Both parents take care of the single egg the female lays. It takes about 42 days to hatch. Mom and dad both care for the hatchling, too, feeding their chick with small fish that they carry back to the nest from the sea.When puffins are just feeding themselves, they tend to swallow the fish they catch while still underwater. When they are feeding their young, they generally carry several small fish at a time back to the nest for their youngster.Using their round tongues, the birds push the fish upward into small notches in their upper bill that help hold the food securely. That way, the puffin can keep its mouth open to catch more fish, adding to the collection already in the back part of its mouth.Once a puffin hatches, it takes about 49 days for it to learn to fly and be able to live on its own. The young puffins leave their nest for good at this point, when they fly or swim out to sea. Early settlers in North America killed puffins as food. They were also hunted for their feathers, often used as hat decorations. Today, puffins still are eaten by people in many places. In spite of being hunted, puffins have never been endangered and their population is in the millions today.However, their numbers have become lower in some parts of their range. There are several programs that work to bring puffins back to some of their former ranges.

The breeding ground of about 60 percent of the world's Atlantic puffins is Iceland. Atlantic puffins live only in the North Atlantic Ocean.From April to August, puffins join together in breeding colonies onshore. The rest of the year they spread out and live far from shore in the open ocean. Young puffins do not join breeding colonies until they are between two and three years old; these birds stay at sea until they mature.FAST FACTS
The scientific name of the Atlantic puffin is Fratercula arctica.

An Atlantic puffin lives to be about 20 years old or more in the wild. The oldest known puffin was 29 years old.An Atlantic puffin is about ten inches (25 centimeters) long. It weighs about 17.5 ounces (500 grams).Atlantic puffins are black-and-white seabirds with a large, colorful, red, blue, and yellow bill. Their legs are orange. Males and females look alike, though the male is slightly bigger.

Because of the shape of their beaks, Atlantic puffins are sometimes called "sea parrots." Another nickname for these birds is "clowns of the sea."
The colorful beaks of the puffin fade in the winter, as do the bright feet. In the spring, as breeding season approaches, the beaks and feet of the birds brighten. Each year, as a puffin grows older, its beak grows bigger.

The largest recorded number of fish in a puffin's beak at once was 62.The Atlantic puffin is the only puffin species found in the Atlantic Ocean. In the Pacific Ocean there are three other species of puffin. The Atlantic species is the smallest puffin.The main predator of puffins is the great black-backed gull. Puffins also have to dodge herring gulls, which watch for puffins returning from sea with fish in their bills for their young. If the puffins can't make it back to their burrow in time, the pesky gulls steal the fish right out of the puffins' beaks.