The Common Puffin
Class: Aves: Birds
Order: Charadriiformes: Auks, Waders, Laris
Family: Alcidae: Auks
Scientific Name: Fratercula artica
Size: 29 - 36 cm (11 1/2 - 14 1/4 in) , weight 490.5 gr. (1 lb. 1 1/3 oz.)
Habitat: open sea, rocky coasts
Nesting habits: Nests in burrows, usually 1 egg, incubates 42 days (average).
Range: N. Atlantic Ocean: Arctic coasts of eastern N. America and W. Eurasia
Diet: Herring and Hake.
Feeding habits: Dives from air or surface, swims rapidly underwater using wings like other alcids, catches small fishes, mollusks, and crustaceans, which it swallows underwater, but when feeding young, can carry up to 30 small fishes at one time, crosswise in bill owing to round tongue and slight serrations on interior of upper mandible which help it hold fishes.
Other names: Atlantic puffin, bottle-nose, coulterneb, Labrador auk, large-billed puffin, pope, and tammy norie.
A small, round-bodied auk with a large head, the common puffin has a spectacular striped bill, which it uses to catch food and in display. In summer, the puffin's bill is colorful, the upper parts of the body and collar are black and the underparts white. In winter, the face is grayish and the bill smaller and duller. Young birds resemble adults in winter plumage, but have smaller, darker bills. The puffin feeds on fish and shellfish and can carry several items at a time in its capacious bill as it flies back to its nest. Its flight is strong and fast, but, like all auks, it has short legs set well back on the body and waddles along clumsily on land. Common puffins breed from late May in colonies on turfed cliff tops or on islands. The female lays 1 egg, rarely 2, in a burrow abandoned by a shearwater or rabbit or in a hole which she digs herself with her feet. Both parents incubate the egg for 40 to 43 days. After breeding, most puffins winter at sea, offshore from the breeding range, but some populations migrate southward.
Some Important Maine Puffin Links:
Project Puffin ~ The Maine Seabird Restoration Programme.
Live view of Eastern Egg Rock Maine (works with RealPlayer.)
Project Puffin Egg Rock Updates.
Adopt a Puffin and you contribute to insuring the future of Puffins on Maine's Coast.
Virtual Puffin tour of Eastern Egg Rock Maine.
News from the Project Puffin Maine Research Islands.
The Seabird Centre at the Audubon Camp in Maine.
Birding in the State of Maine : Puffins.
Puffins on Machias' Seal Island, Maine.
Puffin Watching in Maine by the Wildlife Watcher.
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