The Atlantic Puffin
is 26-29 cm (10-11 inches) in length (cm Bill 3-4) with a 47-63 cm
(19-25 in) wingspan. This bird is mainly black above and white below,
with gray to white cheeks and red-orange legs. Features bright Orange
bill plates grow before the breeding season and autumn, after the
reading. The Horned Puffin on (Fratercula corniculata) from the North
Pacific is very similar, but slightly different head ornaments.
Atlantic Puffin Credit
The Atlantic Puffin
is typically silent at sea, except for soft purring sounds it sometimes
makes in flight. In breeding colonies, it is the most common call is a
trisyllabic KAA-AAR-aar, while birds make a short growl when startled.
This species breeds on the coasts of northern Europe, the Faroe Islands,
Iceland and North America, the Arctic Circle to northern France and
Maine.
Approximately 95% of puffins in North America breed around the coast of Newfoundland. The largest puffin colony in the western Atlantic (estimated at more than 260,000 pairs) can be found at the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, south of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Puffin viewing has also started to become popular in Elliston Newfoundland, previously named Bird Island Cove, located near Trinity.
Predators Puffin include the Great
Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus), the Great Skua (Stercorarius skua),
and species of similar size, which can take a puffin in flight, or
choose from a separate colony. Smaller species, such as gulls Herring
Gull (L. argentatus) which are hardly able to get a healthy adult
puffin, take eggs or newly hatched chicks, and even flying fish.
Species may face competition from other animals nesting burrows, such as rabbits, Manx shearwaters and sometimes penguin. The only time spent on land is nest colleagues before arriving in the colonies, and in the sea coupling. The breeding season is normally puffins in the summer, eggs are laid in June and July. Synchronous spawning is in Puffins in adjacent burrows. In the Faroe Islands, for example, birds may be hunted for local consumption after the breeding season, when excess birds available.