The Tufted Puffin 
275 
Hard or rocky soil is not shunned in prosperous colonies, but many efforts 
here are baffled outright, and “prospects'’ are at least as numerous as 
occupied burrows. Elsewhere the top soil on precipitous, clinging ledges 
may be utilized, or else crannies, crevices, and rock-hewn chambers. 
Upon the Farallone Islands, California, these birds have little opportunity 
for digging in the earth, and little necessity for providing fresh burrows, 
for crevices and cubby-holes abound. These are, for the lUjOst part, 
ample and substantial, and most of them doubtless have seen use meas- 
ured by cycles rather than by generations. Many eggs, and sitting birds 
as well, are visible from the outside ; while some of 
the 
are nothin^ more than the inner- 
Homes 
among Rocks 
most recesses of niches and caves occupied by Murres. 
On the Farallones, there is a fierce, albeit silent, competition between 
these silent birds and the rabbits which swarm over the rocks. I have 
seen impulsive bunnies which, fleeing from fancied danger, and taking 
refuge in the first burrow at hand, emerged more hastily than they went 
in. The Tufted Puffin is a dangerous, as well as a determined foe, and a 
bite from that rugged beak will cut to the bone. 
Although ecjuipped with so formidable a weapon, the birds, in digging 
their burrows, appear to depend upon their feet. These are provided with 
nails as sharp as tacks, and the “finish” of the nesting-chamber usually 
exhibits a criss-cross pattern of fine lines. 
Fong grass and dense thickets, as of salal, salmon-berry bushes, or 
dwarf spruce, occasionally afford refuge to birds hard-pressed for room. 
Here the Puffin, starting from some exposed edge, drives a tunnel through 
the matted vegetation and deposits its egg upon the surface of the ground, 
in shade almost as intense as that afforded by the earth itself. 
Only one egg is laid, dull white with faint vermiculations of brown 
and purplish. Because the nest-lining is usually of the scantiest, a few 
salal leaves or bits of grass, the egg is often so soiled bv contact with the 
earth as to pass for dingy brown. 
The baby Puffin is your true Puffin, and it is undoubtedly he who gave 
this trivial name to the group. He is, indeed, a mere puff-ball of slaty- 
black down, for he is densely covered at birth with down at least an inch 
long, and you could blow him away (Pouf!) if he were not so fat, and 
anchored in a hole. With the approach of the first 
spring he takes on first the feather-tufts, of a dull 
brownish hue, then the white facial mask, with corre- 
sponding bill changes ; but whether or not the yearling bird breeds, is an 
open question. The non-breeding birds remain at sea. 
The Tufted Puffin enjoys the widest breeding-range of any bird in the 
North Pacific, except the Pigeon Guilleniiot ; and, although not so thor- 
oughly distributed as that species, it is undoubtedly far more abundant. 
On the American side, it breeds as far south as the Santa Barbara Islands, 
California, and as far north as Cape Fisburne, in northwestern Alaska ; it 
is, however, of comparatively rare occurrence in Arctic waters. On the 
Asiatic side, its breeding range extends as far south as Japan ; while its 
Baby 
Puffins 
