Atlantic puffin

The Atlantic puffin is a small, round seabird about the size of a crow. In summer it wears a big, brightly striped bill of orange, red, and yellow, and it has bright orange feet with webbing between the toes. Its neat black-and-white feathers make it look a little like it is wearing a smart suit.

Puffins spend most of their lives far out on the open sea and only come to land to raise their chicks. They are wonderful swimmers. A puffin flaps its wings to “fly” underwater and uses its feet to steer, and it can dive down quite deep to chase after fish.

For dinner, puffins catch small fish such as sand lance, herring, and capelin. When they have chicks to feed, the parents carry the little fish back to the nest in their colourful bills.

In spring, puffins gather in big, busy groups called colonies on grassy cliff tops. Each pair digs a cosy burrow in the soil, or tidies up an old one, and the two birds say hello by rattling their bills together. More puffins live around the island of Iceland than anywhere else on Earth.

There are still many millions of Atlantic puffins, but in some places their numbers have been going down, so scientists now watch over them carefully. People help by looking after the islands where puffins nest, keeping away animals that might bother them, and making sure the sea holds plenty of fish for puffins to catch.