Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica): Facts and Habitat

What does an Atlantic puffin look like?

The puffin is a stocky bird with a thick neck, short wings and a short tail. The crown, back, wings and a broad collar around the throat are glossy black, the cheeks are pale gray to white and the breast and belly are white. On land it stands upright on short, bright orange legs and webbed feet with sharp black claws.

The bill is the bird’s trademark. Seen from the side it is broad and triangular, with an orange-red tip, a slate-blue base and a yellow ridge and fleshy rosette at the corners of the mouth. Small horny plates above and below each eye give the face a triangular, slightly sad expression. Males and females look alike, though males are usually a little larger.

After the breeding season the puffin sheds the colorful outer plates of its bill and the eye ornaments, and its face turns darker. This duller winter look is rarely seen by people, because puffins are out at sea by then. Why the bill changes is explained in Why do puffins have colorful beaks?

Young birds are duller still: they have dark gray cheeks, a narrow dark bill and dark legs, and they take several years to develop full adult colors. The Atlantic puffin has two close relatives in the North Pacific, the horned puffin and the tufted puffin, and is the only puffin of the Atlantic.

How big are puffins?

Puffins are much smaller than many people expect, roughly pigeon-sized. Size increases steadily from south to north, and birds from the Arctic are noticeably bigger than those from Britain or France. Scientists have traditionally named three subspecies on this basis, though some argue the change is gradual.

The wings are small for the bird’s weight because they work both in the air and underwater. To stay airborne a puffin must flap very fast, up to about 400 beats a minute, and it can reach around 80 km/h (50 mph) in level flight. Take-off from the sea needs a pattering run across the water, and landings are often clumsy belly flops.

Habitat and range

The Atlantic puffin lives in the cold and cool waters of the North Atlantic. In summer it breeds on islands and coastal cliffs from Maine, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Greenland across to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Svalbard and northwest Russia, and south to Britain, Ireland and Brittany in France.

More than 90 percent of the world population breeds in Europe, and Iceland alone holds well over half of all Atlantic puffins. The largest colony in North America is in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve near St. John’s, Newfoundland. In Britain the main strongholds are in the Northern Isles, St Kilda, the Isle of May, the Farne Islands and Skomer in Wales.

Puffins prefer islands without foxes, rats or other ground predators, and they nest on grassy slopes above sea cliffs where they can dig burrows, or among boulders and scree. Outside the breeding season they live entirely at sea, scattered across the open North Atlantic. A full guide to their colonies and wintering areas is in Where do puffins live?

What do puffins eat?

Puffins feed almost entirely on small fish, usually 3–10 cm (1–4 in) long, although they can manage fish up to about 18 cm (7 in). The main prey varies by region: sand eels in Britain, herring in Norway, capelin in Newfoundland and parts of Iceland, plus sprats and other small schooling fish. Shrimp-like crustaceans and marine worms are also eaten, especially near the coast.

They hunt by sight, diving from the surface and “flying” underwater with half-open wings while steering with their feet. Most dives are short and shallow, rarely longer than about a minute, though dives approaching 60 m (200 ft) have been recorded. An adult needs roughly 40 small fish a day.

Small fish are swallowed underwater, but when feeding a chick a puffin lines up a row of fish crosswise in its bill. A grooved, muscular tongue and backward-pointing spines on the palate hold the catch while it keeps hunting. How many fish fit, and the famous bill-load record, are covered in How many fish can a puffin carry?

Behavior

Puffins are sociable at the colony but solitary at sea. On land they spend hours preening, standing by their burrows and watching their neighbors. A dominant bird walks slowly with its chest puffed out and its tail cocked, a display sometimes called the pelican walk, while a submissive bird hurries past with its head down.

Colonies are noisy underground but quiet on top. In the burrow puffins give a low, growling call that some observers compare to a distant chainsaw; at sea they are mostly silent. When a predator appears, many birds take off together and wheel around the colony in a huge circle, which makes it harder for a gull or skua to pick out one target.

Puffins forage in daylight and often rest on the sea at night. During the breeding season they may travel tens of kilometers from the colony to fish, and in poor years much farther. In winter they molt their flight feathers all at once, which leaves them flightless for a month or two while they ride out the Atlantic storms on the water.

Reproduction and life cycle

Adults return to their colonies in spring, from about March in Britain and later in the far north. Most pairs are monogamous for years and reuse the same burrow, which they clean out and dig deeper, kicking soil out behind them. Burrows are often 70–110 cm (28–43 in) long; puffins also take over old rabbit burrows. Partners renew their bond by billing, rattling their bills together.

The female lays a single white egg, from April in southern colonies to June in Greenland. Both parents share incubation, which lasts about 36–45 days. The chick, called a puffling, hatches covered in dark down with its eyes open, and both parents bring it bill-loads of fish several times a day.

The puffling stays in the dark burrow for about 34–50 days, usually 38–44, depending on how much food is available. When ready it leaves alone at night, walks or flutters down to the sea and swims away from the shore. Young puffins stay at sea for two to three years and usually start breeding at four to six years old.

How long do puffins live?

Puffins are long-lived for their size. Adult survival is high, often over 90 percent a year, and a bird that reaches breeding age can expect to live around 18–20 years on average. The longevity record for a ringed bird in Britain and Ireland is 42 years, set in 2019.

Because each pair raises at most one chick a year, populations depend heavily on adults living a long time. Even small increases in adult deaths, or several poor breeding seasons in a row, can push a colony into decline.

Predators and threats

At the colony the main predators come from the air. Great black-backed gulls and great skuas catch adults, while herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls take eggs and young chicks. Arctic skuas chase puffins in flight until they drop their fish. At sea, seals and large fish occasionally take puffins.

On islands where people have introduced rats, cats, mink or foxes, colonies can be wiped out. The most serious modern threat, however, is food shortage: changes in sea temperature and plankton, linked to climate change and to fishing, have reduced sand eels, herring and other prey in several regions, leading to years in which almost no chicks survive. Severe winter storms, oil spills, drowning in fishing nets and plastic pollution add further losses.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List moved the Atlantic puffin from Least Concern to Vulnerable in 2015, and the 2018 assessment confirmed that status. The global population was estimated at about 12–14 million adults in 2018, but numbers in Europe, which holds most of the world’s puffins, have fallen fast, with steep declines in Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands since about 2000. On the European Red List the puffin is classed as Endangered.

Some colonies show that recovery is possible. Removing rats from Lundy in England and controlling invasive tree mallow on Craigleith in Scotland helped puffins return. In Maine, Project Puffin, started by the National Audubon Society in 1973, brought puffins back to islands where hunting had wiped them out. The full picture is in Are puffins endangered?

Myths and facts

Myth: puffins are a kind of penguin. They are not related closely at all. Puffins are auks of the Northern Hemisphere and can fly, while penguins are flightless birds of the Southern Hemisphere. They look alike because both are dark above and white below, a pattern that hides swimming birds from predators above and below.

Myth: puffins have colorful beaks all year. The bright bill plates grow only for the breeding season and are shed in late summer, leaving a smaller, duller bill through the winter.

Fact: puffins are good flyers. Despite their tubby shape and awkward landings, they fly fast and far, and juveniles can wander thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic before they first come ashore to breed.

Puffins and people

The puffin’s bright bill, upright stance and waddling walk have earned it nicknames such as “clown of the sea” and “sea parrot”, and it has become one of the best-loved birds of the North Atlantic. It is the official bird of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the island of Lundy may take its name from the Old Norse word for puffin.

Puffin watching supports local tourism in Iceland, Norway, Newfoundland, Maine and around Britain and Ireland, including several islands described in our guide to the wildlife of Scotland. Visitors are asked to stay on paths, because burrows collapse easily underfoot. Puffins were once widely hunted for food, and a regulated hunt still takes place in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, although it has been reduced as colonies declined.