THE AUKS 287 



immediately, but returned and showed great solicitude by turning 

 the young one over and over in the water to see if it was injured. 

 During severe storms the young are taken to the lee of some reef or 

 islet until the waves become quiet." 



Turner's account is the fabrication of a romantic imagination 

 — the truth is much more astonishing. We now know that all 

 Fratercula and Lunda species desert their young after a long fledging 

 period. The young chick is well supplied with fish during the first 

 month of its existence, the adults bringing in several beak-loads 

 during the early and the late part of the day. The puffin chick, well 

 covered with down when born, and quite active, has been continuously 

 brooded for the first week only. We can only conjecture here how the 

 young bird is fed in those burrows which are far down in the earth 

 and which receive little or no light from the surface. At first it is 

 probably fed by touch; but presumably the fish, which are partially 

 phosphorescent, are discernible even in darkness, and as the chick 

 becomes more nimble it is able to pick up fish from the ground. 

 (It has not been proved that puffins have a sense of smell. The olfac- 

 tory sense of sea-birds has been little explored, see Fisher, 1952, 

 pp. 421-22. and notes on cormorants devouring strong-smelling fish, 

 p. 212). 



The newly-hatched puffin is fed first of all on very small fish and 

 sand-eels. As it grows older, larger quantities of larger-sized fish are 

 brought in, but, as already pointed out, these fish are never so large 

 as those fed to guillemot chicks. The ability of the puffin to catch and 

 hold up to thirty small fish in its beak at one time has often been 

 remarked upon, and it is undoubtedly related to the peculiar structure 

 of the bill, and the curious round tongue. The interior of the upper 

 mandible has slight serrations which must assist in holding fish. 

 There is no doubt that each fish, as it is captured, is immediately 

 killed by the sharp pincers of the point of the bill. The popular 

 conceptions that the puffin arranges its captures neatly with heads all 

 to one side of its mouth, or alternatively, are of course, quite erroneous. 

 They are held at random, although always across the bill. 



About the fortieth day the young puffin is entirely deserted by 

 its parents, which leave the land altogether and retire to the open 

 sea to begin the moult of the body-feathers which takes place in the 

 autumn. The deserted chick remains fasting in the burrow for about 

 one week, during which the last of the down disappears and the first 

 full juvenile plumage is completed, including all wing and tail feathers. 



