How many puffin species

The chicks fledge at night. After fledging, the chicks spend the first few years of their lives at sea, returning to breed about five years later. Puffins in captivity have been known to breed as early as three years of age. After breeding, all three puffin species winter at sea, usually far from coasts and often extending south of the breeding range.

Iceland is the home to most of the Atlantic puffins with about 10 million individuals. The largest single puffin colony in the world is in Westmann Isles, islands that belong to Iceland.

In , scientists estimated the number of nests to be 1. All Species Wiki Explore. Wiki Content. Recent blog posts Forum. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Edit source History Talk 0. This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia view authors.

Cancel Save. Universal Conquest Wiki. Meanwhile, nonbreeding adults have sooty gray faces and have a smaller, grayish base. In comparison to adults, juveniles have smaller, all-gray bills. Atlantic Puffins are black above and white below. Breeding birds have a gaudy black, orange, and yellow bill and their face are grayish-white. During the nonbreeding season, the face turns a darker gray, and the bill sheds its yellow highlights and shrinks slightly.

Juveniles have all-dark bills. As the bird ages, the bill grows larger and acquires more grooves. A tufted puffin is the largest species and most distinctive in appearance. A tufted puffin is all black except for a white face and long golden plumes curling over the back of its head and neck. Their bill is large and red-orange. Meanwhile, in the nonbreeding season, adults have dark gray faces with no head plumes or bill plates. All three species of puffins feed on small fish.

They are able to capture and carry multiple fish in their bill at a time. Horned Puffins nest in colonies on cliffs and islands over the sea and spend their winters at sea. Atlantic Puffins nest in burrows on rocky islands with short vegetation, and on sea cliffs. They spend the rest of the year at sea.

Tufted puffins nest on coastal slopes in ground burrows. They spend their winters at sea. The tufted puffin and horned puffin are found in the North Pacific Ocean, while the Atlantic puffin is found in the North Atlantic Ocean. To attract a female, male Atlantic puffins flick their heads and grunt like a pig near a nesting burrow. Once paired, they maintain their bond by rubbing their bills together. Atlantic Puffins tend to form monogamous bonds and return to the same nest with the same mate year after year.

Both the male and the female work together to dig a shallow hole or burrow into the ground with their bill and feet. They often make their nest under a boulder or within a crevice among the rocks and use grass and twigs to line the bottom of the burrow.

The female lays one egg at a time with an incubation period of 36 to 45 days and a nestling period of 38 to 44 days. Upon arriving at their breeding site, horned puffins begin their courtships. Their rough tongues allow them to have a firm grasp on fish during one foraging trip. Puffins can dive for up to a minute, although they generally stay underwater for about thirty seconds.

When in the water, they can dive as deep as sixty metres. Puffins are strong flyers. They can beat their wings up to times a minute and move through the air at 88km an hour.

In winter, puffins shed their outer bills, leaving smaller, duller ones behind. Their brighter red and grey plates are grown in again ahead of breeding season to attract potential mates.

Although Puffins are not an endangered species their numbers are on the decline. The main threats include overfishing, which can result in a shortage of food for the puffins, and pollution, in particular oil spills.

Not only does the oil make the birds sick, but it also damages their waterproof feathers, which are essential for their survival. Another factor contributing towards the drop in bird numbers is climate change; rising sea temperatures affect their food sources, namely the sand eel, which lives in a cool water environments.

The wild and windswept Farne Islands lie two miles off the Northumberland Coast. Each year puffins return to their shores to breed between April and late July. Bempton also has the largest kittiwake colony in mainland Britain.