About of Atlantic Puffin

The Atlantic puffin is a bird of the colder waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. It breeds on the coasts of northwest Europe, the Arctic

fringes, and eastern North America. More than 90 of the global population is found in Europe 4,770,000–5,780,000 pairs, equaling 9,550,0

00–11,600,000 adultsand colonies in Iceland alone are home to 60 of the worlds Atlantic puffins. The largest colony in the western

Atlantic can be found at the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, south of St. Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador.Other major breeding locations

include the north and west coasts of Norway, the Faroe Islands, the Shetland and Orkney Islands, the west coast of Greenland, and th

e coasts of Newfoundland. Smaller-sized colonies are also found elsewhere in the British Isles, the Murmansk area of Russia, Novaya Zem

lya, Spitzbergen, Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Maine. Islands seem particularly attractive to the birds for breeding as compared to mainlan

d sites.While at sea, the bird ranges widely across the North Atlantic Ocean, including the North Sea, and may enter the Arctic Circle. I

n the summer, its southern limit stretches from northern France to Maine and in the winter, the bird may range as far south as the Medit

erranean Sea and North Carolina. These oceanic waters have such a vast extent of 15 to 30 million km2 that each bird has more than 1 km2

at its disposal and they are seldom seen out at sea.In Maine, light level geolocators have been attached to the legs of puffins, which

store information on their whereabouts. The birds need to be recaptured to access the information, a difficult task. One bird was found

to have covered 4,800 miles of ocean in eight months, traveling northwards to the northern Labrador Sea then southeastward to the mid

-Atlantic before returning to land.

Atlantic puffins lead solitary existences when out at sea, and this part of their lives has been little studied, as the task of finding

even one bird on the vast ocean is formidable. When at sea, the Atlantic puffin bobs about like a cork, propelling itself through the

water with powerful thrusts of its feet and keeping itself turned into the wind, even when resting and apparently asleep. It spends

much time each day preening to keep its plumage in order and spreads oil from the preen gland. Its downy under-plumage remains dry and

provides thermal insulation. In common with other seabirds, its upper surface is black and underside white. This provides camouflage,

with aerial predators unable to observe the bird against the dark, watery background and underwater attackers failing to notice it as

it blends in with the bright sky above the waves.

The Atlantic puffin diet consists almost entirely of fish, though examination of its stomach contents shows that it occasionally eats

shrimp, other crustaceans, molluscs, and polychaete worms, especially in more coastal waters.[26] When fishing, it swims under water

using its semiextended wings as paddles to ly through the water and its feet as a rudder. It swims fast and can reach considerable d

epths and stay submerged for up to a minute. It can eat shallow-bodied fish as long as 18 cm 7 in, but its prey is commonly smaller f

ish, around 7 cm in long. An adult bird needs to eat an estimated 40 of these per day—sand eels, herring, sprats, and capelin being the

most often consumed. It fishes by sight and can swallow small fish while submerged, but larger specimens are brought to the surface. It

can catch several small fish in one dive, holding the first ones in place in its beak with its muscular, grooved tongue while it catch

es others. The two mandibles are hinged in such a way that they can be held parallel to hold a row of fish in place and these are also

retained by inward-facing serrations on the edges of the beak. It copes with the excess salt that it swallows partly through its kidneys

and partly by excretion through specialised salt glands in its nostrils.