Atlantic Puffin

Beauty Of Animal | Atlantic Puffin | The puffins (Fratercula arctica) is a seabird species in the auk family. Further known as the common puffin, it is the only species that puffins in the Atlantic to find "is. The Puffin is the provincial bird of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The puffin is 26-29 centimeters (10-11 in) in length (Bill 3-4 cm), with between 47 and 63 centimeters (19 to 25 in) wingspan. This bird is mostly black above and white below grow, with gray to white cheeks and red-orange legs. The characteristic bright orange bill plates before the breeding season and are shed after breeding. Bills in mating rituals, as the pair tapping their bills together.

 

The Horned Puffin related (Fratercula corniculata) from the North Pacific looks very similar, but slightly different headdress. The Puffin is typically silent at sea, except for soft purring sounds it sometimes makes in flight. This species breeds on the coasts of northern Europe, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and eastern North America, from and within the Arctic Circle to northern France and Maine. About 95% of puffins breed in North America around Newfoundland's coastlines.  

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 begun to become popular in Elliston Newfoundland, previously named Iceland Bird Cove, near Trinity.

Predators of puffins are the Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus), the Great Skua (Stercorarius skua), and similarly large species that can catch a puffin in flight, or choose a separated from the colony. More recent population decline may have been used because of increased predation by gulls and skuas, the introduction of rats, cats, dogs and foxes on some islands for nesting, contamination by toxic residues that have drowned in fishing nets, declining food supply, and climate change.

In the breeding season of 2006 about 68,000 pairs were counted on the Isle of May. However, Iceland has many times as many breeding pairs of puffins (Lundi in Icelandic) is the most populous bird on the island. In 2008, the decline in the Farne Islands and the Isle of May colonies reported. Because the puffin gets the bulk of their food by diving, it is important that there is an ample supply of resources and food. This study implies consequences for the species if global warming leads to a change in the tides.  

 

SOS Puffin is a project for the preservation of the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick base to save the puffins on the islands in the Firth of Forth. Puffin numbers on the island of Craigleith, once one of the larest colonies in Scotland with 28,000 couples have only a few thousand over the invasion of a giant alien plant Tree Mallow, Lavatera arborea, which has taken over the island and crashed prevented the puffin access to their caves and breeding.