PUFFIN 



Fratercula arc tic a 



HE Puffin is found in all localities suitable to its breeding 

 habits round the entire coast-line of the British Islands, 

 and is perhaps the best-known of all our sea-birds from 

 its quaint appearance. It is most plentiful in rocky 

 districts, and breeds in huge colonies on some of the 

 western islands. 



The Puffin is more or less resident in the British 



seas all the year round, but in winter it is much more seldom observed when 

 scattered over the open sea, as it seldom goes near the land at that season. 

 The Puffin is a gregarious bird, and in some situations its numbers are 

 legion. The Shiant Islands are perhaps the largest Puffin colony in our islands. 

 The custom is to fire a gun towards the face of the cliff or steep slope to 

 raise the birds. At the sound of the gun the Puffins leave their burrows 

 and fly down the face of the slope to the sea in hundreds of thousands. One 

 writer likens it to a mass of shale slipping down a hillside ; the air is filled with 

 Puffins, flying wildly about in legions, crossing and recrossing each other, 

 anon returning to their burrows as the alarm subsides. The Puffin is a good 

 swimmer, sitting high in the water, and looking intensely comical with its 

 large bill and curious expression of face. They dive with great dexterity, 

 and usually prefer to seek safety by swimming away under water, which they 

 do at a great speed, using their wings as easily under water as in the air, 

 like their congeners the Guillemot and Razorbill. In spite of the very 

 small, short wings with which Nature has endowed the Puffin, it is a rapid 

 and powerful bird on the wing, rising from the water with ease. When a 

 colony of birds are disturbed, they will often fly round and round in huge 

 circles, passing and repassing their nesting-sites, and careering about in the 

 air for twenty minutes at a time before they again alight and re-enter their 



