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Illustrated life of an atlantic puffin |
Puffin Information |
Puffin Homes
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Illustrated life of an atlantic puffin |
Puffin Information |
Puffin Homes
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Order Charadriformes Family Genus & Species |
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Hello! I'm Percy the Puffin. I'm an arctic puffin, but there are two other sorts of puffins, the horned puffin and the tufted puffin. (These links are to Rochelle's Page.) My relatives and friends live in the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans and I belong to the Auk family which also includes the Razorbill. I live on Skomer Island in Pembrokeshire, but there are also puffin colonies on Portland Bill in Dorset, the Outer Hebrides in the North of Scotland, Bempton on Humberside and on other remote islands near the UK. For more information on Puffins worldwide, see Puffin Homes. I first became a father when I was about 5 years old. My wife laid her egg in April and our puffling, Percy Jr., was hatched 5 or 6 weeks later. We have one egg each spring. | |||||||||||
| This puffin is hurrying through its burrow! |
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When I stretch out my wings, I measure approximately 55cm, and I weigh about 430grams (give or take 100grams, depending on how much fish I've been eating). I'm about 28cm tall. We puffins love to have fun, and on fine spring days you might see us joyflighting and divebombing! People love our colourful bills and we are sometimes called 'clowns of the air'. But in winter the brightly coloured parts of our beak become duller and smaller, brightening up again for breeding seaon, when we all want to look our best! | |||||||||||
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Hovering on an up-draught is nearly as fun as dive-bombing! | ||||||||||
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I can swim as well as I can fly, and I keep waterproof by applying oil from a gland near my tail when I preen. When I swim, I look as though I am enclosed in a silvery bubble, and this is because the air trapped in my feathers is pushing outwards while I am underwater. 
This poor puffin has been caught in a net.
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| I have to be very careful of gulls, especially the great black-backed gull, because they love to eat puffins. My relatives in Iceland have to watch out for people with nets, too, or they might end up on someone's dinner table! And in Norway they have to watch out for the trained dogs.
This egg has been stolen from a puffin's burrow.
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| There are less of us these days than there used to be, and sea pollution is one reason for this. But climactic change affects sea temperatures and the distribution of fish, and this also puts us in danger. Sand eels, our favourite food, and whitebait which we also eat, are fished commercially, and sadly, this has caused many of my friends and family to starve. But recently Greenpeace protested at the McVities factory, who were using oil from the fish we like to eat and stealing our food, and they have now promised to stop doing it within a year. Sainsburies and Unilever had already decided to stop using fish oil in their products. So perhaps things are looking up for us puffins. If more people know about us, more people can look after us! Find out how you can help by becoming a Puffin Pal!
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Illustrated life of an atlantic puffin |
Puffin Information |
Puffin Homes
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