Creature Feature: Tufted Puffins
Creature Feature: Tufted Puffins Fratercula cirrhata
Adult tufted puffin in flight on the outer coast of Washington State. Photo by Joe Gaydos, SeaDoc Society
Power to the puffins!
These chubby, black sea birds with slicked back, golden hairdos can be found diving for forage fish deep in the Salish Sea. They also live from southern California all the way to Alaska and across the Aleutian Islands into Russia and Japan. They nest on nearly-bare islands in burrows and foraging way out at sea. Can you see traits they have in common with other species in their Alcid family? (hint: look at murres, rhinoceros auklets, and of course, horned and Atlantic puffins). Want to know a seabird scientist secret? Often scientists and naturalists call living things by the name made by abbreviating their names. For tufted puffins, this is “tupus” (pronounced, too-poos).
Tufted puffin parent returning to the burrow nest with herring and sand lance stuck to its spiked inner beak and held fast by a locking tongue. Image by Kuhnmi, Creative Commons.
Tupus’ big, orange beaks are perfect tools for catching their slick, fishy prey. The inside top of their beaks have spikes, called denticles. These poke into the fish they catch and hold them in place while they swim through big schools of forage fish, like sand lance and capelin, or even squid, other molluscs, and crustaceans (crabs and shrimp) at times.
It’s not strange to see them surface with over a dozen little fish tucked securely into their big, spiny beaks by a lock-in-place tongue! During nesting season, most of their catch, from both mom and dad, will make its way back to the burrow to feed hungry chicks.
Rescued tufted puffin fledgling testing its webbed feet at Pt. Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. Image by Mira Castle, SeaDoc Society
Babies in burrows
Tufted puffins lay eggs in burrows that the mom and dad dig with beaks and claws, up to a couple of meters (5-6 feet) deep into the dirt on their nesting island. They sometimes line the nesting chamber at the end of the burrow with cozy feathers and grass.
Burrow nests are near dozens of other parenting puffins in a breeding colony. It’s easier to raise youngsters with friends and family around and keeps them all safer from predators, too! They lay one spotted, white or light blue egg, investing a whole lot of work to raise just one chick each year. Chicks fledge (leave the nest) after 6-7 weeks of careful parent care.
Tupus can’t sing like pop-star loons or sparrows, but instead have a low growl they use to chatter to their chicks when nesting. You can listen to parent puffins and their cheerful chicks on this All About Birds website.
Adaptations
Their clown-white faces and eye-catching orange beaks pop with color only during breeding season. The rest of the year their faces are dark gray and their beaks a dull orange-ish gray. No need to dress up when there is no one to impress.
Many seabirds, especially those with dense bones, like alcids, use the extra boost of the air they push down against the water pushing back up on their bodies. A smart trick to save energy!
Their other physical adaptations, however, never quit. Everything about their bodies is built to dive and fly, which is no easy task when being light helps flight and being heavy helps sink. How do they sink and swim beneath the waves?
For one thing, tufted puffins have dense bones. Their compact, streamlined shape lets them slip through the water powered by flipper-like wings. Like other alcids, puffins are skilled in flight above and under water! They flap their wings to get around swiftly in the sea, diving hundreds of feet deep in their hunt for food. Even though it takes a lot of thrashing and paddling to get airborne, once flying, tupus powerful wings can get them to speeds of 30-40 miles per hour!
Save the tupus!
Current and past tufted puffin nesting colonies. Map by WA Dept. of Fish and Wildlife
For lots of reasons, tufted puffins have had a tough time in the last few decades. There were 23,000 tupus in the ‘80s and now there are fewer than 3,000. SeaDoc Society thought this just isn’t right. They worked with a scientist named Thor Hansen and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to study the tupus and come up with a science-based recovery plan. And a citizen cared so much they donated enough money to fund the science. Thanks to this and other scientific, tribal, and private citizen efforts, tufted puffins are now on the Endangered Species list.
This is just a start. How can you help save the tupus?
Mind your waste: refuse plastics whenever possible, re-use, re-purpose, recycle plastics you have to use. Plastics can be confused for food or enter tupus through the fish they eat
never release your pets, like rabbits, into the wild. Rabbits have grazed the plants that held the soil in place in nesting colonies. No soil = no burrows.
Find out if the stormwater in your community is cleaned before it gets to the sea. Puffins need clean water without the pollution from run-off from streets and farm fields.
Does your family keep toxics out of your home and yard? Using natural compost to feed your plants and natural cleaners in your home will help keep pollution out of the sea, where all of our water drains.
Remember, we are all uphill from the ocean!