The Puffin
IF you are lucky enough to live near the sea cliffs they colonise, it’s a great time to take a boat out to see our resident sea-parrots! One of the most recognisable birds, there are few who don’t know the jolly puffin.
We have puffins living in Britain all year, but summer is when we get our breeding population back – that’s all the birds which live on our west coast and in Ireland. This is apparently a great place to have babies.
Sweet, ungainly little things, puffins are under 30cm long from the beak tip to the end of the tail and have a round body. Their short wings are just as well suited for swimming as they are for flying. They use them to zip around after their fishy prey – their favourite catch being slippery sand eels. Instead of building nests, they use their beaks to dig burrows underground. Sometimes the small islands puffins prefer can be so full of burrows that the ground collapses under any weight – so don’t go walking out in puffin territory or you might find yourselves stuck in a hole.
The main predator of our little friends is the greater blackbacked gull, although herring gulls are happy to take fish right out of a puffin’s beak while in flight. Big bullies! But usually a puffin enjoys a pretty long life. They can live for around 20 years in the wild, which is a staggeringly long time for such an awkward looking little creature.
They spend their winters mainly floating on the ocean, at the mercy of every storm and wave. They are brave, hardy little things, and are really something to be admired – an icon for a good reason.