The Tufted Puffin 
Taken on the S. E. Farallon Photo by the Author 
THE LANDING 
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 equipped 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. Upon a rocky islet known on 
the charts as “Off Trinidad Rock” I found the Puffins nesting in a con¬ 
glomerate rock in tunnels from three to six feet long. The conglomerate 
must have been softer where not exposed to the air, but upon the exposed 
surfaces near the orifice the cement had hardened, so that I could scarcely 
dislodge a single pebble with my steel-shod pike. 
Long grass and dense thickets, as of salal, salmon-berrv 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 as to hue, with faint vermiculations 
of brown and purplish. Because the nest-lining is of the scantiest, a few 
salal leaves or bits of grass, the egg is often so soiled by contact with the 
earth as to pass for dingy brown. 
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