August 22, 2025 • 39 mins
Have you ever seen a puffin? With their bright beaks, orange feet and black and white coloring, these birds are very cool to look at. And we’ve gotten a lot of questions about them! In this episode, we talk with Don Lyons, an educator and avian ecologist with the Seabird Institute in Maine. What are puffins? Why are puffin beaks so colorful? Why do puffins dig burrows? How do puffins learn to fly? How can you tell if a puffin is male or female? How long can puffins hold their breath? Why do they have red feet?
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Jane (00:20):
This is But Why, a Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. Andtoday, I'm somewhere very
special. I'm in southernIceland. Now, if you don't know
Iceland, it's a big islandcountry in the North Atlantic
Ocean, and we're on the WestmanIslands, which is home to the
world's largest colony ofAtlantic puffins, and many of
(00:40):
them are actually right behindme now. They're nesting right
now. They've burrowed into thehillside, and their eggs have
actually hatched. Puffins matefor life, and so each pair has
laid one egg earlier in thespring, and these eggs are just
hatching, or have hatched now,and the little puffin babies
called pufflings are deep intheir burrows so they don't get
(01:01):
eaten by gulls. Later in thesummer, they'll fly out, kind of
fling themselves off thiscliffside and go out to sea.
Puffins spend most of the timeeach year out to sea, and they
only come back and get theirfeet on land when it's time to
nest. So these puffins are herefor a couple of months, and
(01:21):
they're very cute, but they'realso really fascinating birds.
Their beaks are so beautiful anddynamic, although not all the
time, and they have this reallysort of charismatic way about
them that people love. So we'regoing to learn all about puffins
and answer all of your puffinquestions in today's episode.
(01:52):
Hey, it's me back in Vermontnow. We recorded that
introduction back in June whenwe were on one of the most
exciting field trips But Why hasever gone on: a trip to Iceland!
We decided to go to Icelandbecause it's a remarkable
country where we could answer alot of questions you've sent us
over the years on a lot ofdifferent topics. Iceland is
(02:14):
known for having reallyremarkable geological features,
a landscape that is fascinatingand always changing. So we have
upcoming episodes about glaciersand volcanoes that we recorded
in Iceland. We're also doing ahorse episode featuring the
Icelandic horse, a breed knownfor its friendliness and ability
to survive in harsh conditions.And we made a lot of videos
(02:36):
while we were there that we'vestarted publishing on our
YouTube channel, But Why Kids.And I hope you and your adults
can check those out. Theyinclude questions like: Why does
Iceland have so many volcanoes?What is a glacier? How does a
geyser explode? And why isIceland green and Greenland icy?
We're also making a video allabout puffins from our visit to
(03:00):
the world's largest colony ofAtlantic puffins, and that's
what our episode is about today,these remarkable birds. But
here's the thing. We were hopingto be able to record an
interview while we were inIceland with a researcher who
has spent his career studyingpuffins, but he was too busy...
with the puffins. The puffinbabies had just hatched when we
(03:23):
arrived, and he was out lookingin burrows, tagging birds and
collecting data, so we missedhim by a day or two. That's
frustrating. But sometimesflexibility is the name of the
game. And we pivoted tointerview a different researcher
who knows all about thesefascinating creatures, and he
was much closer to where we arenow.
Don Lyons (03:43):
I am Don Lyons. I'm Director of Conservation Science
for the National AudubonSociety's Seabird Institute.
Jane (03:51):
The seabird Institute is based in Maine, the state
farthest north and east in theUnited States. Maine has a lot
of coastline. Here's some triviafor you. If you could drive up
the main coastline in a straightline, well, maybe not even
drive. Like, let's say you wereflying like a bird from bottom
to top, keeping the line betweenthe ocean and the land right
(04:13):
below you, you would travelabout 228 miles. But if you were
to get in a boat and motor inand out of every cove and around
all the cliffs and peninsulasthat jut out and the inlets that
stretch into the land and made aloop around every island that
counts as part of Maine, do youknow how far you'd have to
(04:34):
travel? 3,478 miles. That's morethan the coastline of
California. That also meansthere are a lot of places to
observe seabirds and to see howthey behave, and a lot of
potential locations for seabirdsto rest, nest and find food. So
(04:55):
it's a great place for Don Lyonsto do his job.
Don Lyons (04:58):
My job is super fun. I get to work with birds all
day, year round. I'm ascientist. What I... I call
myself an avian ecologist,"avian" meaning birds, and
"ecologist" meaning I'm mostlyinterested in how birds interact
(05:19):
with their environment, withother species, like the species
they eat, or the species thateat them, or other aspects,
weather, climate, other aspectsof the environment that they
encounter.
Jane (05:31):
But it sounds really quiet where you are right now. You're
not with the birds.
Don Lyons (05:36):
That's right. I'm in an office today, sadly, but I
get to spend a lot of time outon islands, ocean Islands, where
the group of birds that I liketo work with, seabirds,
typically nest. And they nest incolonies, in big groups all
(05:58):
together. They're very social.They like to nest together, and
those can be very noisy places.Birds do a lot of talking to one
another, and also smelly places.Birds, when they're all
concentrated in one place, canproduce a lot of bird poop.
Jane (06:13):
So you've had to get used to the smell of bird poop in
your workplace.
Don Lyons (06:18):
That is right. But most of the time those islands
are, you know, out in the ocean,far from the coast, and so
there's usually a pretty goodbreeze, which helps carry that,
that smell away.
Jane (06:32):
So the specific sea bird we want to talk with you about
today is a bird called thepuffin.
Ace (06:38):
Hello. My name is Ace. I am eight years old. I live in
Denver, Colorado, and myquestion is, what are puffins?
Jane (06:47):
What are puffins?
Don Lyons (06:49):
Ah, well, that's a good question. Coming from
someone in Colorado, you'veprobably never seen a puffin
before. So puffins, they areseabirds. So they spend most of
their time out in the sea, inthe ocean. They eat fish. They
dive underwater. They can swimunderwater with their wings. And
(07:10):
they catch small fish, maybe twoor three inches long, or maybe
five centimeters long, withtheir bill, which is their beak.
They catch those while they'reunderwater, and they they can
eat them right then underwatereven, or they can bring them to
the surface and swallow themthere. And they only come to
(07:32):
land when they're going to nest.So they make nest for three
months out of the year, maybemiddle of summer, and that's the
only time they ever set foot onland. The rest of the time
they're out flying around theocean, or swimming on the
surface of the ocean or divingunderwater to catch fish.
Jane (07:55):
Don told us there are actually four different species
of puffins, and they all live inthe northern half of the world,
the northern hemisphere. By theway, penguins, by contrast, all
live in the southern hemisphere.Three types of puffins live in
the northern Pacific Ocean (08:12):
the horned puffin, the tufted
puffin, and something called therhinoceros auklet, which I had
never heard of. That's a type ofPuffin with a little horn, like
a rhinoceros's horn on the topof its beak, right where its
beak comes out of its face. Butthe most famous puffin is the
one that lives in the NorthAtlantic Ocean.
Don Lyons (08:34):
The Atlantic puffin, which nests in the North
Atlantic Ocean from here inMaine in the US, all the way
across the North Atlantic inCanada and Iceland and the
United Kingdom, even intoNorway. And so they're, they're
an Atlantic puffin species.
Jane (08:56):
Atlantic puffins are what we are mostly going to talk
about today. These are small seabirds, a little heavier, but
about the same length as apigeon. But puffins don't walk
like pigeons. When they're onland, they sort of stand up and
waddle, kind of similar to theway a penguin walks. They have
black backs and white fronts.The top of their heads are
(09:18):
black, and they have big whitecheek patches. And then they
have these really bright orangefeet, an orange and black
triangle over their eyes, andbeautiful black orange and white
beaks. Sometimes these birds arecalled the parrots or the clowns
of the sea.
Hazel (09:35):
My name is Hazel. I live in Gilbert, Arizona. I'm eight
years old. Why are puffins'beaks so colorful?
Don Lyons (09:42):
That's great question, Hazel. So a lot of
times when animals are colorful,they're, they're trying to
convey information, orcommunicate information. With
puffins, that's true, and oftenwhat they're communicating is
how old they are. And whetherthey're old enough to nest. So
(10:03):
when a puffin is a chick or justfledges and takes off into the
world on its own, their bill isdark, kind of black, grayish
black, and it stays that colorfor a while. They often wait
until they're five or six yearsold before they nest, which is
(10:25):
pretty unusual for birds. And sothey spend their second, third,
fourth, fifth year of life notnesting, but they start to look
a little more like an adultpuffin each year. That bill
becomes more colorful. Itbecomes thicker top to bottom,
(10:47):
and it has ridges that kind ofrun vertically from top to
bottom. So that, that colorfulbill that we were also impressed
with and catches our eye reallywell, it develops over time, and
really communicates that anindividual puffin is old enough
to nest.
Jane (11:07):
And when you say old enough to nest, you mean old
enough to mate and have babies.
Don Lyons (11:12):
That's right, yeah. So puffins will find a mate, and
often they mate for a long time,if not for life. The female
puffin will lay just one egg peryear, but none of that starts
until they're 5, 6, 7, yearsold.
Jane (11:31):
When they are too young to nest, do they still come onto
land for those summer months? Orare they out to sea for four or
five years?
Don Lyons (11:40):
Yeah, nice follow up question. Most of the time,
these young birds are out in theocean. They will come to
colonies sometimes late in thesummer. They may just swim
around the island. They may getup and land on the island a
little bit, and they spend someof that time socializing,
getting to know other youngpuffins, but also studying the
(12:03):
colony. Was that colony a placewhere lots of baby puffins were
raised that year? You know, andif so, maybe that's a good place
for that puffin to think aboutnesting themselves when they're
old enough.
Jane (12:16):
Wow, that's fascinating. Can you imagine, you know,
you're out by yourself in theocean for 12 months, unless you
come in to say hey to everybodyelse who's there. And otherwise,
puffins are pretty solitary,right? They're just by
themselves, bobbing out in theocean and catching fish.
Don Lyons (12:32):
Yeah, they really don't socialize much that we
know of away from the colony.They probably see other puffins,
and they go to similar places orthe same places to find food,
but we think they're mainlygoing there to find food, not
really to make friends orpossibly find a mate. And we
(12:55):
know that birds that are alreadyold enough to be nesting, the
male and female, even thoughthey spend every, you know,
every summer together working toraise a chick, during the
winter, they split up and theythey they're not anywhere
particularly close to oneanother during the winter.
Jane (13:13):
So they're not meeting up in the middle of the winter time
to ask each other Reuben'squestion...
Reuben (13:19):
I'm nine years old. I'm from Savannah, Georgia. Where do
birds go in a lightning storm?
Jane (13:24):
They're not like, hey did you see that lightning? How did
you live through that?
Don Lyons (13:29):
They don't get to consult their partners on kind
of get some advice or somethoughts or brainstorm how to
solve problems. Most of the timethey do that on their own.
Jane (13:39):
So how do they survive and where do they go in a lightning
storm?
Don Lyons (13:43):
Puffins are lucky. They don't stick up out of the
water much, so they're not avery high target for a lightning
bolt. Oftentimes, the waves aremuch, are higher than a puffin
will stick out of the water. Sothat's one way they avoid the
risk of getting struck bylightning. They probably also
(14:04):
see storms coming. They'reprobably pretty good at
predicting the weather based onjust what they see around them.
You know, not, not what's goingto happen tomorrow, but you
know, when they see a dark cloudin the afternoon, they probably
can fly away from that or aroundit and avoid a bad storm, to
(14:26):
kind of reduce the chance thatthey get exposed to a lightning
storm.
Jane (14:31):
Birds can get hit by lightning. It's not common, and
there hasn't been much researchdone on it. But there have been
accounts of people seeing birdsget struck by lightning, and
sometimes a bird might be takingshelter in a tree that gets hit
by lightning. Unfortunately,that's usually not good for the
bird. But again, it seems to bepretty rare. Let's talk a little
(14:53):
bit about what puffins do whenthey're on land.
Ellie (14:56):
Hi, my name's Ellie. I'm four years old and I live in
Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Why dopuffins live underground?
Bernie (15:06):
Hi, my name is Bernie. I am six years old. I live in
Woodinville, Washington. Why dopuffins live in within little
holes in hills that are kind oflittle and that are kind of a
medium sized hole?
Don Lyons (15:26):
Yeah, so great questions. You guys already know
a lot about puffins. Yeah. Sopuffins are kind of an unusual
bird in that they nestunderground, and so they don't
spend all their livesunderground, right? They're out
on the ocean for most of theyear, but when they come to an
(15:48):
island to nest, they will lookfor a spot where they can either
dig a hole in dirt, which wecall a burrow, or if an island
is really rocky, but has somebroken up rocks, boulder-sized
rocks, maybe a meter on a side,or two or three feet on a side,
(16:09):
they will look for crevices inthose rocks where they can kind
of drop down below the surface,and again, find a kind of safe,
little hidden burrow-like space.They really only put their nests
in these underground placesbecause that protects the egg
and chick and the adults whilethey're in there from predators.
(16:35):
Like here in North America, baldeagles, really big predatory
birds that are certainly capableof eating the eggs or eating
young chick, or some of thosebirds, like the eagles, are
capable of eating adult puffinstoo.
Jane (16:52):
Some gulls also like to eat puffin babies and puffin
eggs.
Don Lyons (16:57):
That's right, puffins are generally safe from these
species, these predators, ifthey, if they find a good burrow
and a pretty deep burrow. Somebirds, ravens are an example,
will try and dig out birds fromearthen burrows. But if the
(17:18):
puffin has dug a burrow reallydeep, then the raven will
probably give up before it getsthere.
Jane (17:25):
Our team was really lucky. In June, we got to go to Iceland
and do some reporting inIceland. And one of the places
that we went to was the world'slargest colony of Atlantic
puffins. And it was amazing tosee all of these burrows, which
are pretty well hidden. It justsort of looks like a grassy
hillside. And the day that wewere there, the pufflings, the
(17:48):
baby puffins, had just recentlyhatched, so the adults were
outside of the burrows, but wecouldn't see the pufflings, but
most of the adults were sort ofoutside keeping guard. They
seemed to be on alert, and therewere a lot of gulls and other
bigger birds flying around ingreat big circles, I guess maybe
(18:09):
just hoping that they couldcatch sight of a really tasty
little puffin baby, maybe?
Don Lyons (18:14):
Yeah, it sounds like you had a cool trip to see a
really cool puffin colony. Sogulls can have a couple other
sneaky impacts on puffins. Whenpuffins have chicks, once that
egg hatches into a chick,puffins feed the chicks fish and
(18:35):
they carry fish back to theburrow. Kind of cross ways in
their bill, in their beak. Andso those fish are out there for
anybody to see. We scientists,we take pictures of them, and we
identify the fish that puffinsare eating that way. So it's
really neat for a research studyquestion we can understand what
(18:59):
puffin diet is like, what fishare important to puffins, but it
also means that gulls and otherspecies can see those fish, and
a certain number of gulls figureout, hey, I could maybe steal
some of those fish if I caughtan adult puffin kind of not
(19:19):
really paying attention, I couldswoop in there and maybe bump
the adult puffin around, get itto drop those fish, or maybe
scare the adult puffin intodropping those fish. And so a
lot of the interactions you seethere are gulls trying to steal
fish, not actually expecting toget a look at a chick or a
(19:42):
chance at a chick. The chicksare, they're pretty smart, even
though they're very young, andthey very rarely come out of the
burrow. So and when they do,it's often at night when the
gulls are sleeping, not veryactive. So they generally stay
(20:03):
safe in their little burrowuntil they're ready to fledge,
or leave the island and kind ofbecome independent and kind of
go out in the world on theirown.
Jane (20:14):
Well, that brings us to Sawyer's good question about how
baby puffins learn to fly.
Sawyer (20:21):
My name is Sawyer, and I am 10 years old. I'm from
Marietta, Georgia. Why dopuffins live on such high
cliffs? Why don't the adultpuffins carry the baby puffins
instead of letting them jump offthe cliffs themselves?
Jane (20:37):
To get to your question, Sawyer, we first have to
understand a little bit aboutthe body structure of a puffin.
Since puffins spend almost allof their lives in the water
diving for fish, they needreally strong wings for
swimming. Don says most seabirdsthat spend a lot of time
swimming have short wings.Penguins are kind of the extreme
(20:59):
example of this. Their wingshave become so specialized for
swimming that they can't evenfly at all anymore. Puffins are
actually really fast flyers, butthey do have relatively short
wings that help propel themunderwater, so they can't soar
around like the gulls we sawpatrolling the skies near the
puffin burrows when we visitedIceland.
Don Lyons (21:19):
Like those gulls, that's exactly right. Or if
people know albatross orvultures or eagles, a lot of
really big birds have reallylong wings and can soar or glide
through the air. Puffins can'tdo that. They have to beat their
wings really fast. I've heard,people have tried to measure how
(21:44):
fast they beat their wings. Itmight be 400 times a minute.
Jane (21:47):
Wow.
Don Lyons (21:48):
Which is amazing. It's, it's a little like
hummingbirds, even, how, howhard they have to beat their
wings, just to say airborne. Sothey nest on high cliffs or kind
of hills on islands, so thatthey have a lot of space between
them and the water. So when theytake off from their nesting
(22:12):
spot, just outside their burrow,they have a lot of time to get
up speed, to flap their wingsreally hard, and get up speed so
that they are flying, so thatthey don't just drop and land in
the ocean. The chicks startout... So one reason they, the
adults can't carry them, thechicks when they fledge, they're
(22:35):
almost as big as adults, so it'dbe kind of like one of our
parents carrying us around whenwe finished high school, it
would just be really difficultfor the parent to help in that
process. And so those youngpuffins, the first time they
leave the borough and leave theisland, they have not flown
(22:57):
before. They don't have a lot ofmuscles built up to fly well, so
they often are jumping offcliffs and ending up in the
water. Which is okay. They'regood swimmers. They can kind of
paddle away from the island andget their start in life and
start looking for fish to eatright off the bat. But it does
(23:20):
mean that almost all puffinslike to take off when they start
flying from a high spot.
Jane (23:27):
Imagine being that baby puffin, a puffling, and the
first time you have to tryflying, it's in the middle of
the night, and you're not justexpected to flap your wings a
few times and see how it goes.You're going to have to jump off
a high cliff, and hope youfigure it out before you hit the
water. Don says it's not alwaysgraceful, but the pufflings
(23:48):
figure it out pretty quickly. Inthe place that we visited, in
Iceland, the Westman Islands,there are a lot of baby puffins
every year. After all, it's thebiggest colony of Atlantic
puffins in the world. Andsometimes these pufflings get a
little disoriented and turnedaround when they first try to
fly, so they wind up back onland. People who live on the
(24:10):
main island often scoop up thoselittle babies and take them back
to the cliffs at night and kindof throw them or toss them off
the cliff. It sounds a littlealarming, but it's actually
helpful. That's how the babiesget off to sea. I wish we had
been there to see that part ofthe tradition. Coming up, what
are puffins doing right now inthe middle of August? And we'll
(24:31):
learn a little bit about puffinconservation in Maine. About 50
years ago, there were almost nopuffins there at all, because
they'd been hunted so much andeven used in feathered hats. Now
there's a thriving population,the one that Don has been
studying. So stay with us tolearn more.
This is But Why, a Podcast forCurious Kids. I'm Jane Lindholm.
(24:54):
And today, we're learning allabout puffins. These cute little
seabirds are sometimes calledthe parrots of the sea. But it
turns out, they're more thanjust silly looking. They're
fascinating. We're learningabout them from Don Lyons, the
Director of Conservation Sciencefor an Audubon Society program
called the Seabird Institute inMaine. Don has been answering
(25:15):
all of your questions aboutpuffins. We interviewed him on
August 14th, right around thetime when all those pufflings
were making their way out tosea.
Don Lyons (25:24):
Puffins are amazing in that those pufflings, those
fledglings, when they leave theisland, they don't get any more
help from their parents the restof their lives. They're on
their own, which is incredible.They somehow know, they figure
out how to find fish and catchfish without, without the parent
(25:47):
ever showing them how that'sdone.
Jane (25:48):
And they'll figure out how to make it back to their nesting
grounds when they are mature andit's time to start having
babies. Puffins don't just hangaround near the island where
they were born their wholelives. You know, they often go
really far away.
Don Lyons (26:01):
They go where the food is, and that can be
relatively close by, or it canbe quite a ways away. The
puffins here in Maine, theyoften, kind of late summer, they
go north up into the ocean offof Canada, because the food's
really good up there. And sothey'll they'll find herring and
(26:24):
sand lance and other foragefish, we call them. And then as
the fall gets colder and we getcloser to winter, they start
moving south again. And they maybe just a few hundred miles, or
maybe 500 kilometers from thecolony where they, where they
(26:45):
were raised during the winterhere. A few puffins go further
south, but it's just a few birdsthat go that far. But other
puffins, other Atlantic puffinsfrom elsewhere, and other of the
Pacific puffins, the puffinsthat nest out in the Pacific
Ocean, they may go hundreds orthousands of kilometers or miles
(27:09):
southward, usuallym during thewinter. So it really all depends
on where they're going to findfood. They're really just out
there chasing food.
Jane (27:16):
And then, when they're adults and it's time to find a
mate and a nesting ground, theycan find their way back. Year
after year, they go to the samecolony, they find the same mate
and sometimes even the sameburrow. That's pretty
impressive, considering theymight head out to sea, 500 or a
thousand miles away for most ofthe year, and then they can find
(27:36):
their way back to the same tinyisland.
Don Lyons (27:39):
Yeah, it is amazing. It's not something we understand
that well. That part of thisprocess is a bit of a mystery.
Jane (27:46):
Don says they probably have a lot of complex ways of
knowing how to do that,including an internal sense of
direction that's kind of like acompass, an ability to recognize
their island by sight andfamiliar landmarks, and possibly
a sense of smell that helps themsniff out their colony from any
others. But there are still alot of unknowns about how
(28:08):
puffins actually do it. It'shard for us humans to understand
it when we can't even tell onepuffin from another.
Hi, my name is Michaela. I'mfrom Barrie, Ontario. I am eight
years old, and my question is,how do you tell them apart from
male and female?
Don Lyons (28:28):
All puffins look alike. It's kind of amazing. I
can have a puffin in my hand. Ican have two puffins in my hand,
one in each hand, and I cannottell them apart.
Jane (28:39):
Even you!
Don Lyons (28:40):
I cannot tell if one's a male or one's a female.
You know, I can measure them,and I can say, well, this one's
a little bigger than that one,but that's all I got. That's all
I know. The way we do eventuallyfigure that out is we take a
blood sample or pluck a fewfeathers that have blood in
them, and we take that blood toa laboratory, extract the genes
(29:10):
out of the blood, the DNA out ofthe blood, and with that DNA, we
can tell whether it's a male orfemale. So it's amazing that
they can sort that out. But theydo, and I'm sure some of that is
how that bill looks. That billis pretty unique from one bird
(29:30):
to the next, and they can makevocalizations or calls. They can
do a little talking to identifythemselves. And I'm sure the
puffins themselves know othertraits to tell each other apart.
Jane (29:45):
All right, I have a couple of rapid fire questions for you.
Sam (29:49):
My name is Sam. I'm five year old, and I'm from New York.
How long can puffins hold theirbreaths and do they eat fish?
Jane (29:58):
Sam Is wondering, how long can puffins hold their breath
and do they eat fish? We knowthey eat fish. How long can they
hold their breath?
Don Lyons (30:05):
Puffins, they dive underwater, swim underwater that
can last even two or threeminutes. And I bet somebody's
curious about how deep they candive. Most of their dives are
just in the top 50 feet or 15meters of water, but there are
(30:27):
puffins that we've documenteddiving as much as 50 meters or
200 feet, which is amazing for abird that weigh about as much as
a full can of soda.
Juliet (30:39):
Hello. My name is Juliet. I am four year old, and
I live in Denver, Colorado. Howdo birds have red feet?
Jane (30:50):
How do birds, like puffins, have red feet, wonders
Juliet.
Don Lyons (30:54):
That foot color is probably there because it's
another way to signal that abird is an adult. Puffin chicks
don't have red feet. They'rejust kind of dark and black or
gray. Most of that foot color isjust pigments that the puffins
produce. Much like our skincolor varies a lot, or we
(31:16):
produce pigments for our skin.It's not always the same color
in all of us, but that sameprocess produces pigment in the
skin of their legs. But thepurpose of that is probably
primarily to let other puffinsknow that, hey, I'm an adult, I
could be a potential mate.
Jane (31:36):
Michaela, who asked a question earlier about how we
tell female and male puffinsapart, has another question.
Michaela (31:42):
Why do puffins have that little triangle around
their eye?
Jane (31:45):
Don says it's similar to both the colorful feet and the
colorful beak, or bill. Itsignifies that the puffin is an
adult and old enough to mate orhave babies, and he says that
triangle also helps identify apuffin as a puffin, because it's
unique to their species. We gotanother Puffin question from
Logan.
Logan (32:05):
I'm 11 years old. I live in Mount Martha on the
Mornington Peninsula inVictoria, Australia. Do puffins
have any blubber? And if so, howmuch of it do they have?
Jane (32:18):
Blubber is a specialized type of body fat that many
marine animals like whales andseals have. It not only helps
keep their bodies warm in coldwater, but it also helps with
buoyancy, keeping them afloat.While it's usually associated
with marine mammals, penguinshave blubber and they are, of
course, birds. Puffins also havea layer of fat that helps
(32:41):
insulate them from the cold seaand cold winds, but it's not
called blubber. I asked Don ifthere was anything else we
should know about puffins.
Don Lyons (32:50):
Well, fun fact, puffins carry fish back to their
chicks in their bill, crosswaysin the bill, they can catch
multiple fish and hold them, andcatch another fish and hold
that. And so they're oftendelivering five to ten fish to
their chicks at a time. But kindof the record that we've heard
(33:12):
about, or that I've heard about,of how many fish can a puffin
and carry is 62.
Jane (33:20):
No way!
Don Lyons (33:20):
That's what I'm told! I have not seen the photograph,
but you know, that bill isreally designed well to hold
lots of fish. Inside theirmouths, they have some ridges
and kind of barbed surfaces thathelp hold fish. And so they,
they really are designed, youcould say, to hold fish, to
(33:42):
carry fish.
Jane (33:43):
I can barely carry one fish in my mouth, let alone 62,
although I'm tempted to try ittonight. Before we let don go
back to his puffin research, Iwanted to know just a little bit
about the work he and hiscolleagues have been doing in
Maine. Because, you see, puffinswere pretty much gone there for
a long time.
Don Lyons (34:00):
We didn't lose all the puffins, but we were down to
just a handful of puffins onjust one island. It may have
been as few as two puffins, wedon't know, but really, really
low number, and that happenedmostly because people hunted
them for their eggs, for theirmeat, or their feathers. At one
(34:23):
time, it was high fashion forwomen to wear feathers on their
hats, or even whole birds ontheir hats, dead birds.
Jane (34:33):
About 125 years ago, puffins were nearly gone from
the coast of Maine. But in 1973,just over 50 years ago,
researchers decided they weregoing to see if they could bring
them back. So they went topuffin colonies along the
Canadian coastline inNewfoundland, and took some
puffin babies from nests there.
Don Lyons (34:53):
And they took chicks that were about 10 days old.
They stuffed them into asuitcase and put them on a
plane, flew them to Maine, gotthem on a boat. The boat took
them out to one of theseislands, where puffins had
nested 100 years earlier, andpeople had built burrows, had
(35:14):
dug burrows out of sod, and thepufflings were put in those
burrows and that all happenedreally fast, like within 24
hours, within a day, all of thatwas all coordinated ahead of
time, so that when a pufflingwas grabbed, it got to a new
burrow in Maine in 24 hours orso. Kind of an amazing bit of
(35:37):
travel logistics.
Jane (35:40):
Personally, I can't help but think about what a confusing
process that might have been forboth the pufflings and the adult
parents. But anyway.
Don Lyons (35:49):
Pufflings were brought down for over five years
to that island, and in someyears that was around 200
pufflings a year. They were handfed, so there wasn't adult
puffins to feed them. So peoplegot the small fish and gave
those, dropped those fish intothe burrows, and the pufflings
(36:10):
would pick them up and eat them.And then the pufflings fledged
from the island. They left theisland. They don't normally get
help from their parents afterthey leave the island so this
strategy could work, and theyswam away.
Jane (36:25):
Remember that puffins don't mature for several years.
So it was unclear if this planto recolonize Eastern Egg Rock
in Maine was going to work. Thescientists decided to put out
decoys, fake puffins, to make itlooked like the island was a
good place to mate and raisechicks, and they even played the
sounds of seabirds. So anypuffins who were scoping the
(36:47):
island out would think it was arocking place to be. And you
know what? It worked!
Don Lyons (36:52):
Within a couple days of those decoys, those first
decoys going out, real puffinslanded on the island and started
checking them out. It still tooktwo, three more years before
they started nesting. But thatdid happen. It actually happened
on the, those first fish beingcarried into a burrow were seen
(37:15):
on July 4th, 1981.
Jane (37:18):
And today, Don says there are about 3000 puffins nesting
on two restored island colonies.
Don Lyons (37:25):
But just as importantly, kind of the
techniques, the use of movingthe pufflings, the chicks, which
we call translocation, thatmovement of birds and the use of
decoys have now been used foraround a third of all the
seabird species in the world,including some species that that
(37:49):
were critically endangered. SoI... kind of puffins have been a
situation where, you know, somereally good conservation work
for puffins has happened, butalso work that has benefited
many more species of seabirdsaround the world.
Jane (38:08):
What a great place to end, on a conservation success story.
Thanks to Don Lyons, Director ofConservation Science for the
National Audubon Society'sSeabird Institute. And thanks to
all of you for sending us yourpuffin questions. You can always
send us questions about anythingthat makes you feel curious and
you want to know more about.Have an adult help you record
(38:31):
you asking your question. Tellus your first name, where you
live and how old you are, andthen have your adult email the
sound file to questions atbutwhykids.org. If your adults
don't already know how to dothis, you can remind them that
most smartphones come with afree audio note-taking app like,
Voice Memos or Recorder.
(38:52):
Our show is produced by VermontPublic and distributed by PRX.
It's made by Melody Bodette,Sarah Baik and me, Jane
Lindholm, Joey Palumbo is ourvideo producer. Jory Raphael
made our logo, and Luke Reynoldswrote our theme music. If you
like our show, please write us areview or ask your adults to do
it on whatever app you're usingto listen to us. It helps other
(39:15):
kids around the world find us.We'll be back in two weeks with
an all new episode. Until then,stay curious.
This is But Why, a Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. Andtoday, I'm somewhere very
special. I'm in southernIceland. Now, if you don't know
Iceland, it's a big islandcountry in the North Atlantic
Ocean, and we're on the WestmanIslands, which is home to the
world's largest colony ofAtlantic puffins, and many of
(00:40):
them are actually right behindme now. They're nesting right
now. They've burrowed into thehillside, and their eggs have
actually hatched. Puffins matefor life, and so each pair has
laid one egg earlier in thespring, and these eggs are just
hatching, or have hatched now,and the little puffin babies
called pufflings are deep intheir burrows so they don't get
(01:01):
eaten by gulls. Later in thesummer, they'll fly out, kind of
fling themselves off thiscliffside and go out to sea.
Puffins spend most of the timeeach year out to sea, and they
only come back and get theirfeet on land when it's time to
nest. So these puffins are herefor a couple of months, and
(01:21):
they're very cute, but they'realso really fascinating birds.
Their beaks are so beautiful anddynamic, although not all the
time, and they have this reallysort of charismatic way about
them that people love. So we'regoing to learn all about puffins
and answer all of your puffinquestions in today's episode.
(01:52):
Hey, it's me back in Vermontnow. We recorded that
introduction back in June whenwe were on one of the most
exciting field trips But Why hasever gone on: a trip to Iceland!
We decided to go to Icelandbecause it's a remarkable
country where we could answer alot of questions you've sent us
over the years on a lot ofdifferent topics. Iceland is
(02:14):
known for having reallyremarkable geological features,
a landscape that is fascinatingand always changing. So we have
upcoming episodes about glaciersand volcanoes that we recorded
in Iceland. We're also doing ahorse episode featuring the
Icelandic horse, a breed knownfor its friendliness and ability
to survive in harsh conditions.And we made a lot of videos
(02:36):
while we were there that we'vestarted publishing on our
YouTube channel, But Why Kids.And I hope you and your adults
can check those out. Theyinclude questions like: Why does
Iceland have so many volcanoes?What is a glacier? How does a
geyser explode? And why isIceland green and Greenland icy?
We're also making a video allabout puffins from our visit to
(03:00):
the world's largest colony ofAtlantic puffins, and that's
what our episode is about today,these remarkable birds. But
here's the thing. We were hopingto be able to record an
interview while we were inIceland with a researcher who
has spent his career studyingpuffins, but he was too busy...
with the puffins. The puffinbabies had just hatched when we
(03:23):
arrived, and he was out lookingin burrows, tagging birds and
collecting data, so we missedhim by a day or two. That's
frustrating. But sometimesflexibility is the name of the
game. And we pivoted tointerview a different researcher
who knows all about thesefascinating creatures, and he
was much closer to where we arenow.
Don Lyons (03:43):
I am Don Lyons. I'm Director of Conservation Science
for the National AudubonSociety's Seabird Institute.
Jane (03:51):
The seabird Institute is based in Maine, the state
farthest north and east in theUnited States. Maine has a lot
of coastline. Here's some triviafor you. If you could drive up
the main coastline in a straightline, well, maybe not even
drive. Like, let's say you wereflying like a bird from bottom
to top, keeping the line betweenthe ocean and the land right
(04:13):
below you, you would travelabout 228 miles. But if you were
to get in a boat and motor inand out of every cove and around
all the cliffs and peninsulasthat jut out and the inlets that
stretch into the land and made aloop around every island that
counts as part of Maine, do youknow how far you'd have to
(04:34):
travel? 3,478 miles. That's morethan the coastline of
California. That also meansthere are a lot of places to
observe seabirds and to see howthey behave, and a lot of
potential locations for seabirdsto rest, nest and find food. So
(04:55):
it's a great place for Don Lyonsto do his job.
Don Lyons (04:58):
My job is super fun. I get to work with birds all
day, year round. I'm ascientist. What I... I call
myself an avian ecologist,"avian" meaning birds, and
"ecologist" meaning I'm mostlyinterested in how birds interact
(05:19):
with their environment, withother species, like the species
they eat, or the species thateat them, or other aspects,
weather, climate, other aspectsof the environment that they
encounter.
Jane (05:31):
But it sounds really quiet where you are right now. You're
not with the birds.
Don Lyons (05:36):
That's right. I'm in an office today, sadly, but I
get to spend a lot of time outon islands, ocean Islands, where
the group of birds that I liketo work with, seabirds,
typically nest. And they nest incolonies, in big groups all
(05:58):
together. They're very social.They like to nest together, and
those can be very noisy places.Birds do a lot of talking to one
another, and also smelly places.Birds, when they're all
concentrated in one place, canproduce a lot of bird poop.
Jane (06:13):
So you've had to get used to the smell of bird poop in
your workplace.
Don Lyons (06:18):
That is right. But most of the time those islands
are, you know, out in the ocean,far from the coast, and so
there's usually a pretty goodbreeze, which helps carry that,
that smell away.
Jane (06:32):
So the specific sea bird we want to talk with you about
today is a bird called thepuffin.
Ace (06:38):
Hello. My name is Ace. I am eight years old. I live in
Denver, Colorado, and myquestion is, what are puffins?
Jane (06:47):
What are puffins?
Don Lyons (06:49):
Ah, well, that's a good question. Coming from
someone in Colorado, you'veprobably never seen a puffin
before. So puffins, they areseabirds. So they spend most of
their time out in the sea, inthe ocean. They eat fish. They
dive underwater. They can swimunderwater with their wings. And
(07:10):
they catch small fish, maybe twoor three inches long, or maybe
five centimeters long, withtheir bill, which is their beak.
They catch those while they'reunderwater, and they they can
eat them right then underwatereven, or they can bring them to
the surface and swallow themthere. And they only come to
(07:32):
land when they're going to nest.So they make nest for three
months out of the year, maybemiddle of summer, and that's the
only time they ever set foot onland. The rest of the time
they're out flying around theocean, or swimming on the
surface of the ocean or divingunderwater to catch fish.
Jane (07:55):
Don told us there are actually four different species
of puffins, and they all live inthe northern half of the world,
the northern hemisphere. By theway, penguins, by contrast, all
live in the southern hemisphere.Three types of puffins live in
the northern Pacific Ocean (08:12):
the horned puffin, the tufted
puffin, and something called therhinoceros auklet, which I had
never heard of. That's a type ofPuffin with a little horn, like
a rhinoceros's horn on the topof its beak, right where its
beak comes out of its face. Butthe most famous puffin is the
one that lives in the NorthAtlantic Ocean.
Don Lyons (08:34):
The Atlantic puffin, which nests in the North
Atlantic Ocean from here inMaine in the US, all the way
across the North Atlantic inCanada and Iceland and the
United Kingdom, even intoNorway. And so they're, they're
an Atlantic puffin species.
Jane (08:56):
Atlantic puffins are what we are mostly going to talk
about today. These are small seabirds, a little heavier, but
about the same length as apigeon. But puffins don't walk
like pigeons. When they're onland, they sort of stand up and
waddle, kind of similar to theway a penguin walks. They have
black backs and white fronts.The top of their heads are
(09:18):
black, and they have big whitecheek patches. And then they
have these really bright orangefeet, an orange and black
triangle over their eyes, andbeautiful black orange and white
beaks. Sometimes these birds arecalled the parrots or the clowns
of the sea.
Hazel (09:35):
My name is Hazel. I live in Gilbert, Arizona. I'm eight
years old. Why are puffins'beaks so colorful?
Don Lyons (09:42):
That's great question, Hazel. So a lot of
times when animals are colorful,they're, they're trying to
convey information, orcommunicate information. With
puffins, that's true, and oftenwhat they're communicating is
how old they are. And whetherthey're old enough to nest. So
(10:03):
when a puffin is a chick or justfledges and takes off into the
world on its own, their bill isdark, kind of black, grayish
black, and it stays that colorfor a while. They often wait
until they're five or six yearsold before they nest, which is
(10:25):
pretty unusual for birds. And sothey spend their second, third,
fourth, fifth year of life notnesting, but they start to look
a little more like an adultpuffin each year. That bill
becomes more colorful. Itbecomes thicker top to bottom,
(10:47):
and it has ridges that kind ofrun vertically from top to
bottom. So that, that colorfulbill that we were also impressed
with and catches our eye reallywell, it develops over time, and
really communicates that anindividual puffin is old enough
to nest.
Jane (11:07):
And when you say old enough to nest, you mean old
enough to mate and have babies.
Don Lyons (11:12):
That's right, yeah. So puffins will find a mate, and
often they mate for a long time,if not for life. The female
puffin will lay just one egg peryear, but none of that starts
until they're 5, 6, 7, yearsold.
Jane (11:31):
When they are too young to nest, do they still come onto
land for those summer months? Orare they out to sea for four or
five years?
Don Lyons (11:40):
Yeah, nice follow up question. Most of the time,
these young birds are out in theocean. They will come to
colonies sometimes late in thesummer. They may just swim
around the island. They may getup and land on the island a
little bit, and they spend someof that time socializing,
getting to know other youngpuffins, but also studying the
(12:03):
colony. Was that colony a placewhere lots of baby puffins were
raised that year? You know, andif so, maybe that's a good place
for that puffin to think aboutnesting themselves when they're
old enough.
Jane (12:16):
Wow, that's fascinating. Can you imagine, you know,
you're out by yourself in theocean for 12 months, unless you
come in to say hey to everybodyelse who's there. And otherwise,
puffins are pretty solitary,right? They're just by
themselves, bobbing out in theocean and catching fish.
Don Lyons (12:32):
Yeah, they really don't socialize much that we
know of away from the colony.They probably see other puffins,
and they go to similar places orthe same places to find food,
but we think they're mainlygoing there to find food, not
really to make friends orpossibly find a mate. And we
(12:55):
know that birds that are alreadyold enough to be nesting, the
male and female, even thoughthey spend every, you know,
every summer together working toraise a chick, during the
winter, they split up and theythey they're not anywhere
particularly close to oneanother during the winter.
Jane (13:13):
So they're not meeting up in the middle of the winter time
to ask each other Reuben'squestion...
Reuben (13:19):
I'm nine years old. I'm from Savannah, Georgia. Where do
birds go in a lightning storm?
Jane (13:24):
They're not like, hey did you see that lightning? How did
you live through that?
Don Lyons (13:29):
They don't get to consult their partners on kind
of get some advice or somethoughts or brainstorm how to
solve problems. Most of the timethey do that on their own.
Jane (13:39):
So how do they survive and where do they go in a lightning
storm?
Don Lyons (13:43):
Puffins are lucky. They don't stick up out of the
water much, so they're not avery high target for a lightning
bolt. Oftentimes, the waves aremuch, are higher than a puffin
will stick out of the water. Sothat's one way they avoid the
risk of getting struck bylightning. They probably also
(14:04):
see storms coming. They'reprobably pretty good at
predicting the weather based onjust what they see around them.
You know, not, not what's goingto happen tomorrow, but you
know, when they see a dark cloudin the afternoon, they probably
can fly away from that or aroundit and avoid a bad storm, to
(14:26):
kind of reduce the chance thatthey get exposed to a lightning
storm.
Jane (14:31):
Birds can get hit by lightning. It's not common, and
there hasn't been much researchdone on it. But there have been
accounts of people seeing birdsget struck by lightning, and
sometimes a bird might be takingshelter in a tree that gets hit
by lightning. Unfortunately,that's usually not good for the
bird. But again, it seems to bepretty rare. Let's talk a little
(14:53):
bit about what puffins do whenthey're on land.
Ellie (14:56):
Hi, my name's Ellie. I'm four years old and I live in
Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Why dopuffins live underground?
Bernie (15:06):
Hi, my name is Bernie. I am six years old. I live in
Woodinville, Washington. Why dopuffins live in within little
holes in hills that are kind oflittle and that are kind of a
medium sized hole?
Don Lyons (15:26):
Yeah, so great questions. You guys already know
a lot about puffins. Yeah. Sopuffins are kind of an unusual
bird in that they nestunderground, and so they don't
spend all their livesunderground, right? They're out
on the ocean for most of theyear, but when they come to an
(15:48):
island to nest, they will lookfor a spot where they can either
dig a hole in dirt, which wecall a burrow, or if an island
is really rocky, but has somebroken up rocks, boulder-sized
rocks, maybe a meter on a side,or two or three feet on a side,
(16:09):
they will look for crevices inthose rocks where they can kind
of drop down below the surface,and again, find a kind of safe,
little hidden burrow-like space.They really only put their nests
in these underground placesbecause that protects the egg
and chick and the adults whilethey're in there from predators.
(16:35):
Like here in North America, baldeagles, really big predatory
birds that are certainly capableof eating the eggs or eating
young chick, or some of thosebirds, like the eagles, are
capable of eating adult puffinstoo.
Jane (16:52):
Some gulls also like to eat puffin babies and puffin
eggs.
Don Lyons (16:57):
That's right, puffins are generally safe from these
species, these predators, ifthey, if they find a good burrow
and a pretty deep burrow. Somebirds, ravens are an example,
will try and dig out birds fromearthen burrows. But if the
(17:18):
puffin has dug a burrow reallydeep, then the raven will
probably give up before it getsthere.
Jane (17:25):
Our team was really lucky. In June, we got to go to Iceland
and do some reporting inIceland. And one of the places
that we went to was the world'slargest colony of Atlantic
puffins. And it was amazing tosee all of these burrows, which
are pretty well hidden. It justsort of looks like a grassy
hillside. And the day that wewere there, the pufflings, the
(17:48):
baby puffins, had just recentlyhatched, so the adults were
outside of the burrows, but wecouldn't see the pufflings, but
most of the adults were sort ofoutside keeping guard. They
seemed to be on alert, and therewere a lot of gulls and other
bigger birds flying around ingreat big circles, I guess maybe
(18:09):
just hoping that they couldcatch sight of a really tasty
little puffin baby, maybe?
Don Lyons (18:14):
Yeah, it sounds like you had a cool trip to see a
really cool puffin colony. Sogulls can have a couple other
sneaky impacts on puffins. Whenpuffins have chicks, once that
egg hatches into a chick,puffins feed the chicks fish and
(18:35):
they carry fish back to theburrow. Kind of cross ways in
their bill, in their beak. Andso those fish are out there for
anybody to see. We scientists,we take pictures of them, and we
identify the fish that puffinsare eating that way. So it's
really neat for a research studyquestion we can understand what
(18:59):
puffin diet is like, what fishare important to puffins, but it
also means that gulls and otherspecies can see those fish, and
a certain number of gulls figureout, hey, I could maybe steal
some of those fish if I caughtan adult puffin kind of not
(19:19):
really paying attention, I couldswoop in there and maybe bump
the adult puffin around, get itto drop those fish, or maybe
scare the adult puffin intodropping those fish. And so a
lot of the interactions you seethere are gulls trying to steal
fish, not actually expecting toget a look at a chick or a
(19:42):
chance at a chick. The chicksare, they're pretty smart, even
though they're very young, andthey very rarely come out of the
burrow. So and when they do,it's often at night when the
gulls are sleeping, not veryactive. So they generally stay
(20:03):
safe in their little burrowuntil they're ready to fledge,
or leave the island and kind ofbecome independent and kind of
go out in the world on theirown.
Jane (20:14):
Well, that brings us to Sawyer's good question about how
baby puffins learn to fly.
Sawyer (20:21):
My name is Sawyer, and I am 10 years old. I'm from
Marietta, Georgia. Why dopuffins live on such high
cliffs? Why don't the adultpuffins carry the baby puffins
instead of letting them jump offthe cliffs themselves?
Jane (20:37):
To get to your question, Sawyer, we first have to
understand a little bit aboutthe body structure of a puffin.
Since puffins spend almost allof their lives in the water
diving for fish, they needreally strong wings for
swimming. Don says most seabirdsthat spend a lot of time
swimming have short wings.Penguins are kind of the extreme
(20:59):
example of this. Their wingshave become so specialized for
swimming that they can't evenfly at all anymore. Puffins are
actually really fast flyers, butthey do have relatively short
wings that help propel themunderwater, so they can't soar
around like the gulls we sawpatrolling the skies near the
puffin burrows when we visitedIceland.
Don Lyons (21:19):
Like those gulls, that's exactly right. Or if
people know albatross orvultures or eagles, a lot of
really big birds have reallylong wings and can soar or glide
through the air. Puffins can'tdo that. They have to beat their
wings really fast. I've heard,people have tried to measure how
(21:44):
fast they beat their wings. Itmight be 400 times a minute.
Jane (21:47):
Wow.
Don Lyons (21:48):
Which is amazing. It's, it's a little like
hummingbirds, even, how, howhard they have to beat their
wings, just to say airborne. Sothey nest on high cliffs or kind
of hills on islands, so thatthey have a lot of space between
them and the water. So when theytake off from their nesting
(22:12):
spot, just outside their burrow,they have a lot of time to get
up speed, to flap their wingsreally hard, and get up speed so
that they are flying, so thatthey don't just drop and land in
the ocean. The chicks startout... So one reason they, the
adults can't carry them, thechicks when they fledge, they're
(22:35):
almost as big as adults, so it'dbe kind of like one of our
parents carrying us around whenwe finished high school, it
would just be really difficultfor the parent to help in that
process. And so those youngpuffins, the first time they
leave the borough and leave theisland, they have not flown
(22:57):
before. They don't have a lot ofmuscles built up to fly well, so
they often are jumping offcliffs and ending up in the
water. Which is okay. They'regood swimmers. They can kind of
paddle away from the island andget their start in life and
start looking for fish to eatright off the bat. But it does
(23:20):
mean that almost all puffinslike to take off when they start
flying from a high spot.
Jane (23:27):
Imagine being that baby puffin, a puffling, and the
first time you have to tryflying, it's in the middle of
the night, and you're not justexpected to flap your wings a
few times and see how it goes.You're going to have to jump off
a high cliff, and hope youfigure it out before you hit the
water. Don says it's not alwaysgraceful, but the pufflings
(23:48):
figure it out pretty quickly. Inthe place that we visited, in
Iceland, the Westman Islands,there are a lot of baby puffins
every year. After all, it's thebiggest colony of Atlantic
puffins in the world. Andsometimes these pufflings get a
little disoriented and turnedaround when they first try to
fly, so they wind up back onland. People who live on the
(24:10):
main island often scoop up thoselittle babies and take them back
to the cliffs at night and kindof throw them or toss them off
the cliff. It sounds a littlealarming, but it's actually
helpful. That's how the babiesget off to sea. I wish we had
been there to see that part ofthe tradition. Coming up, what
are puffins doing right now inthe middle of August? And we'll
(24:31):
learn a little bit about puffinconservation in Maine. About 50
years ago, there were almost nopuffins there at all, because
they'd been hunted so much andeven used in feathered hats. Now
there's a thriving population,the one that Don has been
studying. So stay with us tolearn more.
This is But Why, a Podcast forCurious Kids. I'm Jane Lindholm.
(24:54):
And today, we're learning allabout puffins. These cute little
seabirds are sometimes calledthe parrots of the sea. But it
turns out, they're more thanjust silly looking. They're
fascinating. We're learningabout them from Don Lyons, the
Director of Conservation Sciencefor an Audubon Society program
called the Seabird Institute inMaine. Don has been answering
(25:15):
all of your questions aboutpuffins. We interviewed him on
August 14th, right around thetime when all those pufflings
were making their way out tosea.
Don Lyons (25:24):
Puffins are amazing in that those pufflings, those
fledglings, when they leave theisland, they don't get any more
help from their parents the restof their lives. They're on
their own, which is incredible.They somehow know, they figure
out how to find fish and catchfish without, without the parent
(25:47):
ever showing them how that'sdone.
Jane (25:48):
And they'll figure out how to make it back to their nesting
grounds when they are mature andit's time to start having
babies. Puffins don't just hangaround near the island where
they were born their wholelives. You know, they often go
really far away.
Don Lyons (26:01):
They go where the food is, and that can be
relatively close by, or it canbe quite a ways away. The
puffins here in Maine, theyoften, kind of late summer, they
go north up into the ocean offof Canada, because the food's
really good up there. And sothey'll they'll find herring and
(26:24):
sand lance and other foragefish, we call them. And then as
the fall gets colder and we getcloser to winter, they start
moving south again. And they maybe just a few hundred miles, or
maybe 500 kilometers from thecolony where they, where they
(26:45):
were raised during the winterhere. A few puffins go further
south, but it's just a few birdsthat go that far. But other
puffins, other Atlantic puffinsfrom elsewhere, and other of the
Pacific puffins, the puffinsthat nest out in the Pacific
Ocean, they may go hundreds orthousands of kilometers or miles
(27:09):
southward, usuallym during thewinter. So it really all depends
on where they're going to findfood. They're really just out
there chasing food.
Jane (27:16):
And then, when they're adults and it's time to find a
mate and a nesting ground, theycan find their way back. Year
after year, they go to the samecolony, they find the same mate
and sometimes even the sameburrow. That's pretty
impressive, considering theymight head out to sea, 500 or a
thousand miles away for most ofthe year, and then they can find
(27:36):
their way back to the same tinyisland.
Don Lyons (27:39):
Yeah, it is amazing. It's not something we understand
that well. That part of thisprocess is a bit of a mystery.
Jane (27:46):
Don says they probably have a lot of complex ways of
knowing how to do that,including an internal sense of
direction that's kind of like acompass, an ability to recognize
their island by sight andfamiliar landmarks, and possibly
a sense of smell that helps themsniff out their colony from any
others. But there are still alot of unknowns about how
(28:08):
puffins actually do it. It'shard for us humans to understand
it when we can't even tell onepuffin from another.
Hi, my name is Michaela. I'mfrom Barrie, Ontario. I am eight
years old, and my question is,how do you tell them apart from
male and female?
Don Lyons (28:28):
All puffins look alike. It's kind of amazing. I
can have a puffin in my hand. Ican have two puffins in my hand,
one in each hand, and I cannottell them apart.
Jane (28:39):
Even you!
Don Lyons (28:40):
I cannot tell if one's a male or one's a female.
You know, I can measure them,and I can say, well, this one's
a little bigger than that one,but that's all I got. That's all
I know. The way we do eventuallyfigure that out is we take a
blood sample or pluck a fewfeathers that have blood in
them, and we take that blood toa laboratory, extract the genes
(29:10):
out of the blood, the DNA out ofthe blood, and with that DNA, we
can tell whether it's a male orfemale. So it's amazing that
they can sort that out. But theydo, and I'm sure some of that is
how that bill looks. That billis pretty unique from one bird
(29:30):
to the next, and they can makevocalizations or calls. They can
do a little talking to identifythemselves. And I'm sure the
puffins themselves know othertraits to tell each other apart.
Jane (29:45):
All right, I have a couple of rapid fire questions for you.
Sam (29:49):
My name is Sam. I'm five year old, and I'm from New York.
How long can puffins hold theirbreaths and do they eat fish?
Jane (29:58):
Sam Is wondering, how long can puffins hold their breath
and do they eat fish? We knowthey eat fish. How long can they
hold their breath?
Don Lyons (30:05):
Puffins, they dive underwater, swim underwater that
can last even two or threeminutes. And I bet somebody's
curious about how deep they candive. Most of their dives are
just in the top 50 feet or 15meters of water, but there are
(30:27):
puffins that we've documenteddiving as much as 50 meters or
200 feet, which is amazing for abird that weigh about as much as
a full can of soda.
Juliet (30:39):
Hello. My name is Juliet. I am four year old, and
I live in Denver, Colorado. Howdo birds have red feet?
Jane (30:50):
How do birds, like puffins, have red feet, wonders
Juliet.
Don Lyons (30:54):
That foot color is probably there because it's
another way to signal that abird is an adult. Puffin chicks
don't have red feet. They'rejust kind of dark and black or
gray. Most of that foot color isjust pigments that the puffins
produce. Much like our skincolor varies a lot, or we
(31:16):
produce pigments for our skin.It's not always the same color
in all of us, but that sameprocess produces pigment in the
skin of their legs. But thepurpose of that is probably
primarily to let other puffinsknow that, hey, I'm an adult, I
could be a potential mate.
Jane (31:36):
Michaela, who asked a question earlier about how we
tell female and male puffinsapart, has another question.
Michaela (31:42):
Why do puffins have that little triangle around
their eye?
Jane (31:45):
Don says it's similar to both the colorful feet and the
colorful beak, or bill. Itsignifies that the puffin is an
adult and old enough to mate orhave babies, and he says that
triangle also helps identify apuffin as a puffin, because it's
unique to their species. We gotanother Puffin question from
Logan.
Logan (32:05):
I'm 11 years old. I live in Mount Martha on the
Mornington Peninsula inVictoria, Australia. Do puffins
have any blubber? And if so, howmuch of it do they have?
Jane (32:18):
Blubber is a specialized type of body fat that many
marine animals like whales andseals have. It not only helps
keep their bodies warm in coldwater, but it also helps with
buoyancy, keeping them afloat.While it's usually associated
with marine mammals, penguinshave blubber and they are, of
course, birds. Puffins also havea layer of fat that helps
(32:41):
insulate them from the cold seaand cold winds, but it's not
called blubber. I asked Don ifthere was anything else we
should know about puffins.
Don Lyons (32:50):
Well, fun fact, puffins carry fish back to their
chicks in their bill, crosswaysin the bill, they can catch
multiple fish and hold them, andcatch another fish and hold
that. And so they're oftendelivering five to ten fish to
their chicks at a time. But kindof the record that we've heard
(33:12):
about, or that I've heard about,of how many fish can a puffin
and carry is 62.
Jane (33:20):
No way!
Don Lyons (33:20):
That's what I'm told! I have not seen the photograph,
but you know, that bill isreally designed well to hold
lots of fish. Inside theirmouths, they have some ridges
and kind of barbed surfaces thathelp hold fish. And so they,
they really are designed, youcould say, to hold fish, to
(33:42):
carry fish.
Jane (33:43):
I can barely carry one fish in my mouth, let alone 62,
although I'm tempted to try ittonight. Before we let don go
back to his puffin research, Iwanted to know just a little bit
about the work he and hiscolleagues have been doing in
Maine. Because, you see, puffinswere pretty much gone there for
a long time.
Don Lyons (34:00):
We didn't lose all the puffins, but we were down to
just a handful of puffins onjust one island. It may have
been as few as two puffins, wedon't know, but really, really
low number, and that happenedmostly because people hunted
them for their eggs, for theirmeat, or their feathers. At one
(34:23):
time, it was high fashion forwomen to wear feathers on their
hats, or even whole birds ontheir hats, dead birds.
Jane (34:33):
About 125 years ago, puffins were nearly gone from
the coast of Maine. But in 1973,just over 50 years ago,
researchers decided they weregoing to see if they could bring
them back. So they went topuffin colonies along the
Canadian coastline inNewfoundland, and took some
puffin babies from nests there.
Don Lyons (34:53):
And they took chicks that were about 10 days old.
They stuffed them into asuitcase and put them on a
plane, flew them to Maine, gotthem on a boat. The boat took
them out to one of theseislands, where puffins had
nested 100 years earlier, andpeople had built burrows, had
(35:14):
dug burrows out of sod, and thepufflings were put in those
burrows and that all happenedreally fast, like within 24
hours, within a day, all of thatwas all coordinated ahead of
time, so that when a pufflingwas grabbed, it got to a new
burrow in Maine in 24 hours orso. Kind of an amazing bit of
(35:37):
travel logistics.
Jane (35:40):
Personally, I can't help but think about what a confusing
process that might have been forboth the pufflings and the adult
parents. But anyway.
Don Lyons (35:49):
Pufflings were brought down for over five years
to that island, and in someyears that was around 200
pufflings a year. They were handfed, so there wasn't adult
puffins to feed them. So peoplegot the small fish and gave
those, dropped those fish intothe burrows, and the pufflings
(36:10):
would pick them up and eat them.And then the pufflings fledged
from the island. They left theisland. They don't normally get
help from their parents afterthey leave the island so this
strategy could work, and theyswam away.
Jane (36:25):
Remember that puffins don't mature for several years.
So it was unclear if this planto recolonize Eastern Egg Rock
in Maine was going to work. Thescientists decided to put out
decoys, fake puffins, to make itlooked like the island was a
good place to mate and raisechicks, and they even played the
sounds of seabirds. So anypuffins who were scoping the
(36:47):
island out would think it was arocking place to be. And you
know what? It worked!
Don Lyons (36:52):
Within a couple days of those decoys, those first
decoys going out, real puffinslanded on the island and started
checking them out. It still tooktwo, three more years before
they started nesting. But thatdid happen. It actually happened
on the, those first fish beingcarried into a burrow were seen
(37:15):
on July 4th, 1981.
Jane (37:18):
And today, Don says there are about 3000 puffins nesting
on two restored island colonies.
Don Lyons (37:25):
But just as importantly, kind of the
techniques, the use of movingthe pufflings, the chicks, which
we call translocation, thatmovement of birds and the use of
decoys have now been used foraround a third of all the
seabird species in the world,including some species that that
(37:49):
were critically endangered. SoI... kind of puffins have been a
situation where, you know, somereally good conservation work
for puffins has happened, butalso work that has benefited
many more species of seabirdsaround the world.
Jane (38:08):
What a great place to end, on a conservation success story.
Thanks to Don Lyons, Director ofConservation Science for the
National Audubon Society'sSeabird Institute. And thanks to
all of you for sending us yourpuffin questions. You can always
send us questions about anythingthat makes you feel curious and
you want to know more about.Have an adult help you record
(38:31):
you asking your question. Tellus your first name, where you
live and how old you are, andthen have your adult email the
sound file to questions atbutwhykids.org. If your adults
don't already know how to dothis, you can remind them that
most smartphones come with afree audio note-taking app like,
Voice Memos or Recorder.
(38:52):
Our show is produced by VermontPublic and distributed by PRX.
It's made by Melody Bodette,Sarah Baik and me, Jane
Lindholm, Joey Palumbo is ourvideo producer. Jory Raphael
made our logo, and Luke Reynoldswrote our theme music. If you
like our show, please write us areview or ask your adults to do
it on whatever app you're usingto listen to us. It helps other
(39:15):
kids around the world find us.We'll be back in two weeks with
an all new episode. Until then,stay curious.
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