The Tufted Puffin {Umda cirrhata) 



By Wells W. Cooke 



Length : 12 inches. 



Range: Pacific coast from CaHfoniia to Alaska. 



Four varieties of puffin are found in America. 



The bills of the puffin are short, stout and extremely broad vertically, with 

 little horizontal width. The upper mandible projects beyond the lower, producing 

 a resemblance to the parrot. A peculiar comb-like excrescence forms on bill at 

 nesting time, a sex mark. The general color of the bird is black with a conspic- 

 uous white faced mask; the long flowing yellow ear tufts are curved inward like 

 the horns of a ram. 



Aside from the gulls and terns, puffins are probably the uneasiest birds 

 about their breeding grounds. When not excitedly moving about the rocks, they 

 are generally uttering their piercing notes, often more shrill than the scream of 

 the gull. When the birds enter their burrows they may be heard uttering a 

 sound not unlike a disturbed feline. 



Puffins are sociable birds, found in the uninhabited portions of our seacoasts, 

 where they deposit their single white egg in burrows. Both male and female 

 assist in incubation. From the burrow containing the downy young, the old bird 

 may be removed with the hand when the nesting is usually found clinging by 

 the bill to the wing or tail feathers of the parent. 



The puffin is an arctic sea bird allied to the auk, having a short, thick, 

 swollen beak. Also related to the grebe and the loon, and more closely to the 

 murre. Owing to the puffin's short wings, he is not a great flyer, but he does fly 

 very well and also uses his wings under water to catch fish, etc. 



There are several species, varying from six and one-half to seventeen inches 

 in length. The puffin has a huge triangular, gorgeously colored beak that gives 

 it a look of clownish wisdom. On land it sits up on its short tail in an awkward, 

 solemn fashion. In water it dives with a loon-like rapidity in pursuit of fish on 

 which it feeds. The puffin nests in deep rock crevices, or, failing these and, in 

 fact usually, at the end of a burrow excavated in a sand cliff. A single -white 

 egg is placed in a rounded depression about three feet from the face of the cliff. 

 Sentinels are placed to notify a nesting colony of the approach of danger. If 

 an arm be thrust into a burrow to take a surprised puffin, it grasps with its bill, 

 like a parrot, and holds on like an owl. The common puffin is found along the 

 shores of the Atlantic from Maine and Scotland northward. The wings are 

 weak; the tail scanty. The side of the face, breast, and abdomen are white. The 

 rest of the plumage is of a jet black. In size the puffin resembles a small duck. 



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