Puffins

Nature 3 Minutes

Puffins are cute, stocky birds, known for their black and white plumage and orange feet and bills. Their appearance has earned them numerous nicknames, including “sea parrots” and “clowns of the sea.” Puffins are often compared to penguins because of their plumage, waddling walk, and diving ability, but the two birds are not actually related.

Types of Puffins

Depending on which expert you ask, there are three or four puffin species. All puffin species are types of auks or alcids. The Atlantic or common puffin (Fratercula arctica) is the only species native to the North Atlantic. The tufted or crested puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) and the horned puffin (Fratercula corniculata) live in the North Pacific. The rhinoceros auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata) is definitely an auk and only sometimes considered to be a type of puffin. Like the tufted and horned puffin, it ranges across the North Pacific.

Description

Puffin plumage depends on the species, but the birds are generally brownish-black or else black and white, with black caps and white faces. Puffins are stocky, with short tails and wings, orange webbed feet, and large beaks. During the breeding season, the outer portions of the beak are bright reddish orange. After breeding, the birds shed the outer part of their bills, leaving smaller and less-colorful beaks.

The Atlantic puffin is about 13 inches long, while the horned puffin and tufted puffin average 15 inches long. Male and female birds are visually indistinguishable, except that the male in a pair tends to be slightly larger than his mate.

Habitat and Distribution

The open sea of the North Atlantic and North Pacific is home to puffins. Most of the time, the birds live out at sea, far from any coast. During the breeding season, they seek islands and coastlines to form breeding colonies.

The Atlantic puffin ranges from Iceland, Greenland, and Norway as far south as New York and Morocco. The horned puffin may be found from the coasts of Alaska, British Columbia, and Siberia, wintering along the California and Baja California coast. The tufted puffin and rhinoceros auklet range largely overlaps that of the horned puffin, but these birds also overwinter off the coast of Japan.

Diet

Puffins are carnivores that feed on fish and zooplankton, preying primarily on herring, sand eels, and capelin. Puffin beaks feature a hinge mechanism that allows them to hold several small fish at a time, making it easier to transport small prey to feed a chick.

Behavior

Unlike penguins, puffins can fly. By rapidly beating their short wings (400 beats per minute), a puffin can fly between 48 to 55 mph. Like other auks, puffins also “fly” underwater. Despite their mobility in the air and sea, puffins appear clumsy when walking on land. Puffins are highly vocal at their breeding colonies, but silent when they are out at sea.

Reproduction and Offspring

In captivity, puffins reach sexual maturity at three years of age. In the wild, breeding usually occurs when the birds are around five years old. Like other auks, puffins are monogamous and tend to form lifelong pairs. Each year, the birds return to the same colonies. They build nests among rocks or burrows in the soil, depending on the colony geography and puffin species.

The female lays a single white or lilac-colored egg. Both parents incubate the egg and feed the chick, which is commonly called a “puffling.” Pufflings lack the well-defined plumage markings and colorful bills of their parents. Chicks fledge at night and head out to sea, where they will remain until they are ready to breed. The average lifespan of a puffin is about 20 years.

Conservation Status

The horned puffin and tufted puffin are classified as being of “least concern” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The IUCN lists the Atlantic puffin as “vulnerable” because populations are rapidly declining across the species’ European range. Researchers believe the decline is due to multiple factors, including food shortage caused by overfishing, predation, pollution, and mortality in fishing nets. Gulls are the principle natural predator of puffins, although they are also preyed upon by eagles, hawks, foxes, and (increasingly) domestic cats. Atlantic puffins are hunted for eggs, food, and feathers in the Faroe Islands and Iceland.

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Published by pat frederick

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91 thoughts on “Puffins”

    1. Liked by 1 person

  6. Like

  12. Citizen 817
    April 7, 2023 12:25 am

    @realDonaldTrump

    8h
    These Morons in the White House, who are systematically destroying our Country, headed up by the biggest Moron of them all, Hopeless Joe Biden, have a new disinformation game they are playing – Blame “TRUMP” for their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan. I watched this disaster unfold just like everyone else. I saw them take out the Military FIRST, GIVE $85 Billion of military equipment, allow killing of our soldiers, and leave Americans behind. Biden is responsible, no one else!

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Good morning, Pat and Filly!

    Puffins are another amazing example of GOD infinite imagination and creativity!

    Have a beautiful quiet peaceful Holy Friday.

    Remember His sacrifice and victory.

    The Shroud of Turin beautifully, powerfully, perfectly depicts the Lord Jesus Christ’s peace in surrender – His obedience unto death – and the exact moment of His victory over death!

    Liked by 1 person

      1. True – and note that I didn’t say it was his actual shroud.

        However, as I looked at it this morning, I realized it depicts His sacrifice, obedience unto death and victory just the same. It’s mysterious that it’s a photo-negative image… as though energy – powerful restored life energy – singed the cloth – and that speaks to me. Would be interesting to know if Lazarus’ grave bindings also were similarly singed. :8-)

        Liked by 2 people

  18. To the tune of “She’s got Betty Davis eyes….”……”he’s got Donald Trump eyebrows!!!” Too funny! They are adorable but I didn’t know about the different types of puffins.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. “Chinese Load Cow’s Milk with mRNA Exosomes–Successfully Immunize Mice — COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Assault Possible Through Food Supply”
    Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH™
    2 hr ago

    EXCERPT: “The nation’s food supply can be manipulated by public health agencies to influence population outcomes. A great is example is fortification of cereal grains with folic acid — the synthetic form of folate — which successfully reduced the incidence of neural tube defects (e.g. spina bifida). Now an oral route of administration is being considered specifically for COVID-19 vaccination using mRNA in cow’s milk.

    Zhang and colleagues have demonstrated that a shortened mRNA code of 675 base pairs could be loaded into phospholipid packets called exosomes derived from milk and then using that same milk, be fed to mice. The mice gastrointestinal tract absorbed the exosomes and the mRNA must have made it into the blood stream and lymphatic tissue because antibodies were produced in fed mice against SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein (receptor binding domain).”

    https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/chinese-load-cows-milk-with-mrna

    Liked by 1 person

  20. “Sweden: Investigation Shows State Actor Behind Nord Stream Blast”
    BY TYLER DURDEN, THURSDAY, APR 06, 2023 – 05:40 PM
    EXCERPT: “In yet more evidence on the side of Seymour Hersh’s reporting, Sweden has announced Thursday that amid its ongoing investigation into the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, it has concluded that a state actor is the likeliest culprit. Swedish Public Prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist, who heads the ongoing investigation, stated “The clear main scenario” is that a state-sponsored group was behind the explosions.

    While not ruling out any scenario at this point, he said the conclusion is based on the explosives used, which are rare and not widely available outside of governments and their militaries. “We are carrying out a number of concrete investigative precautions… Our hope is to be able to confirm who has committed this crime, but it should be noted that it likely will be difficult given the circumstances,” Ljungqvist said. He also acknowledged that the crime is “difficult to investigate,” given that it “took place 80 meters [262 feet] under the water.”

    Denmark is also investigating, but two of the leaks that resulted from the Sept. 26, 2022 explosions underneath the Baltic Sea occurred in Sweden’s economic zone. According to the AP, Sweden hasn’t completely ruled out that it could have been an independent group:”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/sweden-investigation-shows-state-actor-most-likely-behind-nord-stream-blast

    Liked by 1 person

  21. words come back to haunt you…

    William Gaynor
    William Gaynor
    April 7, 2023 8:24 am

    Let’s be honest. The NRA is as responsible for the MSD child murders as if they pulled the trigger. NRA has turned 2d Amendment into a suicide pact for our children. When do we deal with NRA?

    — Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 15, 2018

    Liked by 2 people

  26. Liked by 1 person

  29. Liked by 2 people

  31. VERY interesting article but long….

    “Culture Shock & Awe — Hollyweird and the Weight of Greed”
    Burning Bright
    51 min ago

    EXCERPTS: “We are in a War of Stories…..There’s nothing cute or reductive about that. In fact, I don’t think it gets any more Big Picture to suggest that anything and everything we pay attention to in the Info War, the Mind War or the Strange War—whatever you want to call this Fifth-Generation conflict between the forces of Globalism and Sovereignty the world over—runs the gamut between Actual and Potential Events through the lens of Stories seeded into the Collective Mind, germinated by ongoing revelations and deployments of the Media, Political, Financial and even Military variety and consummated by the fusion of Real with UnReal—the collapse of the one into the other that forms a cognitive catharsis point for the observing mind.

    And we are that observing mind. You. Me. More importantly—and for our purposes today—the ‘sleepers’ among the general population in the United States. Those within the reductive and outdated groupings we assign to the ‘Right,’ ‘Left,’ and reachable ‘Center’ of political and social ideology in this once-great and future-great nation we are trying to both preserve and reform in keeping with—and perhaps to exceed—the vision of our forebears.
    —————–
    And, dear readers, [they] have done a fine job of enforcing that cold, dispassionate, collectivist and deconstructionist ideology onto a growing plurality within the very American Mind we hope to bring along, kicking and screaming if we must, into the movement—into the era—we refer to as the Great Awakening.

    ‘Culture,’ in the context in which I use the term is a reference to a shared story. As I have argued before, human beings map onto stories on both an emotional and psychological or cognitive level because we are designed or created in order to imprint and learn through the employment of empathy and understanding with our fellow Man. And that empathy and understanding is often most strongly achieved through the sharing and absorbing of stories.

    Whether true or false, real or unreal, fact or fantasy, stories hold the power to influence, guide and ultimately, to either free or control a given Mind. And that is quite a power.

    It’s also one the enemy has recognized, cultivated and employed for years, wielding their financial and collectivist influence over the story-setting and paradigm-molding hive mind that is Hollywood, the music industry, the publishing industry and their foundational checks and balances within the Media Industrial Complex.

    This has given rise to the immature, reactive and ultimately self-defeating mindset among many in our community that ‘story’ itself—fiction and fantasy—are pursuits either beyond our ability to influence or beneath us to try in the first place. And I believe that nothing could be further from the truth.”

    https://burningbright.substack.com/p/culture-shock-and-awe

    Liked by 1 person

  32. Liked by 1 person

    1. The Planned-emic and intentional spread of the engineered virus, and the vaccines made a lot of the wrong people rich – !

      And they killed a lot of innocent people, disabled and destroyed the health of many others!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      Liked by 2 people

            1. Think how much graft goes into an infrastructure project in the blue cities – no wonder Houston and Nola always flood and no wonder CA is in such a mess.

              Liked by 2 people

  35. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

    Belle
    Belle
    April 7, 2023 10:41 am

    Two pieces of news I found interesting that isn’t on the MSM. Raytheon associate director, Jeff Lampkin, and his wife were killed in a light plane crash in Florida on Wednesday.

    Viktor Bout sent a telegram to President Trump in support because of the lawsuit against him. “First of all, I believe that his life is in danger.”

    Liked by 1 person

  36. this DA offered a plea deal to a man who murdered 3 people…he pleads guilty to voluntary manslaughter on 1 count and skates on the other 2. Judge denies plea deal…Soros funded da now wants that judge disqualified to rule on ANY of her cases…
    FTA
    A San Francisco Bay Area district attorney funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros is demanding that a judge who rejected a plea deal for a suspect in a string of three killings be disqualified from that case and other criminal matters being prosecuted by her office.

    In a video message shared on YouTube Wednesday afternoon, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price argued that Alameda County Superior Court Judge Mark McCannon “overstepped his boundaries as a judicial officer and has created a firestorm of prejudicial comments that do not, in my view, serve justice.” The prosecutor did not cite specifically how.

    “The judge is supposed to be an impartial referee managing cases that come before him,” she said. “Because of Judge McCannon’s inappropriate comments and conduct on two separate occasions, my office will file a motion to disqualify him from hearing any criminal cases being prosecuted by our office.”

    Last month, McCannon rejected a plea deal brokered by Price’s office for defendant Delonzo Logwood to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter in the July 1, 2008, fatal shooting of 22-year-old Eric Ford, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

    Pamela Price, the newly elected Alameda County District Attorney, posted a video demanding a judge be disqualified from all her cases.

    Pamela Price, the newly elected Alameda County District Attorney, posted a video demanding a judge be disqualified from all her cases. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

    In exchange, murder charges against Logwood in the killings of Zaire Washington, 24, and Richard Carter, 30, that same year would be dropped.

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-francisco-area-soros-da-demands-judge-rejected-deal-alleged-killer-disqualified-all-cases

    Liked by 1 person

        1. ah…
          they had to do the feeding at the farm but one of the goats went int o labor, so they stayed to make sure everything was okay.
          I think I’ll post the prayer and stuff I do later, in case i get sidetracked.

          Liked by 1 person

  38. I am adding a short daily prayer to the board. I would invite each of you, if you wish, to also add one or maybe two of your own liking. I do not want to stifle anyone but please limit yourself to one or two religious postings. here’s one I found that I liked.

    Like

  43. I’m not sure who needs to hear this…but I. AM. NOT. A. COSTUME!
    (prolly no one here…)
    still it is insulting that some people think that all there is to being a women is putting on a dress, wig and make up.

    Liked by 2 people

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