Darker plumage is useful during winter as they are able to absorb more heat. Scientists believe, this coincides with the start of the breeding season. Once spring comes around, they brighten up. In addition, their legs and feet also lose colour, fading to a pale yellow. They look like miniature penguins with their black wings, tail and head, chubby white cheeks, a necklace of black feathers, bright orange feet and a striking triangular beak with grey, yellow and red markings.ĭuring the winter months, Puffins lose their bright beak coloration, and have more muted grey colours to their beak and face. Puffins are one of the world’s most recognisable birds. Rhinoceros Auklet puffins are found predominantly along the Pacific Coast of North America and travel to Northern Asia for winter. They spend the winter as far south as California. The Tufted and Horned puffins are Pacific species that live in large colonies between Canada and Japan, including most of Western Europe and Northern Russia. In winter they travel to New York, Spain, the Canaries and Morocco. Other popular places for Atlantic puffins include Norway, Denmark, Sweden, UK, Greenland, Canada and North America. Almost 60% of the world’s puffins make their breeding homes in Iceland, while the UK is home to approximately 10% of the planet’s puffin population. Puffin colonies can be found in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Arctic Circle. Puffins are seabirds, spending most of the year at sea and breed in coastal spaces such as cliff edges or crags. There are four species of Puffin Atlantic, Tufted, Horned and Rhinoceros Auklet. Like most birds, Puffins are migratory, but they remain in the Northern Hemisphere. They may use visual reference points, smells, sounds, the Earth's magnetic fields-or perhaps even the stars.Known as “the clown of the sea”, Puffins are beautiful birds, full of character with a striking appearance and a love of the ocean. It is unclear how these birds navigate back to their home grounds. Puffin couples often reunite at the same burrow site each year. When a chick hatches, its parents take turns feeding it by carrying small fish back to the nest in their relatively spacious bills. Females lay a single egg, and both parents take turns incubating it. The birds often select precipitous, rocky cliff tops to build their nests, which they line with feathers or grass. Iceland is the breeding home of perhaps 60 percent of the world's Atlantic puffins. Puffin Colonies and BreedingĪtlantic puffins land on North Atlantic seacoasts and islands to form breeding colonies each spring and summer. By flapping their wings up to 400 times per minute they can reach speeds of 55 miles an hour. In the air, puffins are surprisingly fleet flyers. Puffins typically hunt small fish like herring or sand eels. They steer with rudderlike webbed feet and can dive to depths of 200 feet, though they usually stay underwater for only 20 or 30 seconds. They are excellent swimmers that use their wings to stroke underwater with a flying motion. These birds live most of their lives at sea, resting on the waves when not swimming. Atlantic puffins have penguin-like coloring but they sport a colorful beak that has led some to dub them the “sea parrot.” The beak fades to a drab gray during the winter and blooms with color again in the spring-suggesting that it may be attractive to potential mates.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |