Where to See Puffins in Britain
Six places that reward a proper visit: the burrowed turf of Skomer, Northumberland’s crowded seabird islands, the chalk cliffs of Yorkshire and three very different encounters in Scotland.
On Skomer, we keep our boots on the path and our camera bag between them. Beside us, the turf is perforated by burrows. It is the sort of ground on which, somewhere else, we might spread a picnic blanket; here, stepping backwards to improve a photograph could put a foot through a nursery roof. Before we have done anything particularly accomplished with the camera, the island has made us rather more careful about our feet.
The bird responsible has enjoyed exceptionally good publicity. That orange-red bill, the pale face, the slightly apprehensive expression: a puffin seems almost designed to persuade people who have never owned binoculars to spend money on a boat. Its actual life is considerably tougher than its souvenir-shop career suggests. It catches fish underwater using its wings, raises its chick out of sight and spends much of the year at sea. The bright adult on the summer cliff is the accessible part of a story that continues far beyond the land.
We have chosen six places for six worthwhile versions of that encounter. Skomer gives us a long day among burrows; the Farnes put an island landing inside a broader sea journey; Bempton opens up a cliff colony without a crossing. The Isle of May adds an unusually revealing scientific record, Lunga draws us through a Hebridean landscape of birds and abandoned settlement, and Sumburgh Head allows us to return to a Shetland colony on our own timetable. The largest headcount is not the deciding factor. How we can watch, what we can understand and whether the visit suits us matter considerably more.
Jump to: Skomer · Inner Farne · Bempton · Isle of May · Lunga · Sumburgh Head · Beyond Britain · Ten puffin facts
When to see puffins
May and June are the most useful starting point for a first British puffin trip. Early July can also be rewarding, but this is a breeding-season visit, not an all-summer appointment. Arrival and departure vary between colonies and years: Bempton’s usual puffin window is April to mid-July, while Skomer’s birds begin leaving from mid-July and are normally gone by the month’s end. A boat that continues sailing in August may have perfectly good reasons to sail. Puffins need not be one of them.
The breeding stage changes the encounter, too. An adult attending its egg may be hidden inside the nest; chick-rearing brings the conspicuous deliveries of fish. We plan around the colony’s current season and the time available ashore, rather than a universal promise about the best hour to arrive. For an island visit, the ticket needs to say landing if walking among the breeding grounds is the point of the journey. A cruise past the cliffs is a different experience, however similar the pictures advertising it.
1. Skomer, Pembrokeshire
The pleasure of having enough time
At the Wick, one of Skomer’s best-known puffin-watching areas, the temptation is to settle the whole visit around the first view. We follow the path on, making room for the island beyond the first composition. Skomer allows roughly four and a half hours ashore on its standard day landing, which is long enough for the initial excitement to give way to more discriminating attention. There is time to compare the cliff edges with the grassy slopes and eat the lunch we have carried without calculating how many minutes of the landing the sandwich is consuming. That generous interval is the island’s strongest recommendation.
The chick itself is conspicuously absent from our view. Much of its early life takes place inside the burrow, while the adults make the journeys we can watch. Puffins normally lay a single egg, and the BTO gives about five years as the typical age of first breeding. That is a slow way to build a population. As we follow the comings and goings from the path, the returning adults’ loads of fish belong to the concentrated work of getting a chick through the season. Given enough time, the visible traffic begins to explain the life concealed beneath the grass.
Skomer’s good news deserves attention without becoming a promise about every colony. Its spring 2026 census recorded 52,019 individual puffins, a new local high. The counting team divided the island into sections and worked through birds on land, in the air and on the water under suitable conditions. That is patient monitoring, quite different from our impression of abundance from a path. It is also a reason to take the island’s rules seriously: this is a working reserve in which the visitor route occupies a small, negotiated part of the birds’ breeding ground.
The return brings us back to the steep landing steps and the practical limit of the recommendation. There are 87 of them, and the island’s rough paths do not offer wheelchair access. Dogs, including assistance dogs, cannot land. We have brought food and water because there is no café to rescue an inadequate picnic, and our return sailing is allocated. For someone who can manage that self-contained day, Skomer earns its place through time and intimacy with the habitat. For someone who needs level access or an early exit, Bempton is the more considerate choice.
PLAN YOUR SKOMER VISIT
Pembrokeshire Islands Boat Trips
Our choice for a day landing
The authorised commercial day-landing service from Martin’s Haven allows approximately four and a half hours ashore. Choose this for a first visit with enough time to explore beyond the initial puffin gathering. Book the landing product rather than a coastal cruise. The 2026 peak adult ticket was £46, plus a 6% booking fee; 2027 day tickets are scheduled for release on 1 December 2026.
Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales
For staying on the island
The island hostel is the more immersive option: basic, self-catering accommodation, access beyond the day-trip timetable and the team’s nightly bird log. Stays are normally two or three nights, with a separately charged crossing. This is an overnight alternative, not a second competing ferry operator. At our November 2026 check, stays from 15 April to 27 July 2027 were fully booked; enquire about cancellations or plan a future season.
2. Inner Farne, Northumberland
A crowded island with a history of solitude
The hat goes on before we set out along the visitor route. It is a soft one, as instructed, and the reason has nothing to do with achieving the correct look for a Northumberland holiday. Arctic terns nest close to the paths and defend the space around them. A hard helmet can damage a striking bird’s bill; stopping beneath an agitated tern to admire its determination prolongs the intrusion. We keep moving through the nesting areas. The seabirds have rather more at stake in our progress than we do.
Inner Farne’s human buildings make an interesting backdrop to this seasonal occupation. The chapel stands on an island where St Cuthbert sought a hermit’s life in the seventh century; the surviving medieval building belongs to a later monastic community. The early cells of stone and turf have disappeared, but the desire to remove oneself from mainland affairs is easy to understand here. Our own arrival has required rather less renunciation. Seahouses is a boat journey away, and there is a return time attached to the excursion.
Puffins are one part of a colony that refuses to arrange itself around a single favourite. We direct the binoculars between the grassy nesting ground and the surrounding rock faces, where the neighbouring seabirds make different uses of the island. A puffin burrow, a guillemot ledge and the exposed nesting space of a tern demand different kinds of vigilance. Watching the whole colony makes the island more absorbing than an attempt to secure the orange bill and move on. It also explains why a visitor path can be a busy boundary rather than simply the shortest route between viewpoints.
The sea journey supplies a second perspective. Coming from Seahouses, we approach the islands from the level at which birds return from feeding; on land, the traffic has destinations. That combination is the Farnes’ particular strength. The standard Inner Farne excursions discussed here give approximately an hour ashore within a trip of two and a half to three hours, so the landing is concentrated rather than leisurely. We can appreciate the approach and the island together, but we cannot spend Skomer’s afternoon here by willing the return boat to be later.
This is the choice for a Northumberland coastal break in which the crossing is part of the pleasure and an hour on the island is enough. It is less persuasive for someone whose entire purpose is prolonged photography beside the burrows. The landing also remains the skipper’s decision, and a trip may become a non-landing cruise if conditions prevent access. We check the boat and landing charges separately: National Trust membership helps with the island fee, but it does not pay the operator to take us there.
PLAN YOUR FARNE ISLANDS VISIT
Billy Shiel’s
For wildlife with maritime history
The Inner Farne Landing Trip combines the seabird excursion with commentary on the islands and the route associated with Grace Darling’s 1838 rescue. Choose it when the sea journey and Northumberland’s maritime story matter alongside the hour ashore. The published adult boat fare is £32; the 2026 peak National Trust landing fee was a separate £17 for non-members. Confirm next-season prices and book the landing trip specifically.
Serenity
For the catamaran viewing platform
Serenity’s fleet offers catamaran viewing decks, onboard wildlife interpretation and toilets. Its published Inner Farne trip also allows about an hour ashore, so the reason to choose it is the boat arrangement rather than extra island time. Ask which vessel will run your departure and confirm the new season’s schedule; the landing page still displays older dates. This landing trip does not accommodate wheelchair users, even where another cruise might.
3. Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire
Learning to look across a whole colony
At the viewing platform, we raise the binoculars and discover that finding a puffin involves a more discriminating use of black and white than expected. The chalk itself is pale; the seabirds interrupt it in different shapes and positions. Guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and gannets are all part of the work of looking. The puffin’s broad breeding bill is useful once the view allows it, but at a distance recognition takes patience. We lower the binoculars occasionally to recover the scale of the cliff before narrowing the view again.
Bempton gives us height and breadth rather than the familiar island-path portrait. The colony occupies a face of coastline, with birds using ledges and crevices and moving between the cliffs and the North Sea. Our view crosses that activity instead of following it along a low grassy slope. This makes the place especially rewarding when we are willing to let the other species compete for attention. A puffin remains the object of the journey, but the surrounding birds prevent the visit from becoming a prolonged examination of a single empty patch of rock.
We move between the nearer viewpoints without having to preserve enough time for a return sailing. That freedom sounds modest until it is compared with an island ticket: we can stop, start again, return to the centre or call the day finished. The three viewpoints closest to the visitor centre are fully wheelchair accessible, with viewing bays, and mobility scooters can be reserved. The provision is specific and useful. It does not pretend that every coastal path is level, or that the word “accessible” answers every question about an individual visit.
The gannets make it difficult to maintain our original sense of priorities. Their white bodies and black wingtips are conspicuous against the sea; the long wings give them a quite different presence from the rapidly beating auks. We widen the view to follow the shape of the colony instead of inspecting every ledge for a coloured bill. Even the birds’ fishing differs. The gannet plunges into the sea from above; the puffin pursues its fish underwater with its wings. Watching the birds together makes that shared stretch of water considerably less uniform, and our binoculars are spending less time trained on the spot where we first expected a puffin.
There is a reservation, and it deserves stating plainly: a distant puffin against a cliff is not the same experience as a close bird beside an island path. A phone camera cannot always reconcile the two. We choose Bempton for the whole colony, the flexible mainland visit and the unusually useful access arrangements, not on a promise that its puffins will reproduce a photograph made somewhere else. Binoculars are the first addition to the bag; a willingness to spend time looking is the second.
PLAN YOUR BEMPTON VISIT
RSPB Bempton Cliffs
For an independent day
The strongest starting point when flexibility matters: visit at your own pace, hire binoculars if needed and use the reserve’s viewing platforms and visitor facilities. Ordinary admission needs no advance booking; mobility scooters should be reserved. The published peak adult admission is £8 including parking, with free entry for RSPB members. Check the route that meets your access needs before travelling.
Yorkshire Coast Nature
For improving your photography
Its advertised seabird workshop pairs a maximum of four participants with wildlife photographer Steve Race for four hours at Bempton, covering fieldcraft, exposure, composition and camera technique. Choose this when learning is part of the objective, rather than paying simply to enter the reserve. Bring suitable photographic equipment; admission is additional for non-members. Select a date within puffin season, since a general seabird workshop cannot guarantee puffins.
4. The Isle of May, Firth of Forth
The birds above ground, and the evidence beneath it
On the May, our attention moves between the close ground and structures designed to be seen from miles away. The lighthouse buildings are conspicuous; the burrows ask us to look down. Scotland’s first lighthouse began operating here in 1636, with a coal fire in an iron basket announcing the island to ships. The later lighthouse was designed by Robert Stevenson. It is a substantial human history for a place only about a mile long, and it keeps the island from becoming an anonymous green platform on which to photograph seabirds.
We follow the marked paths across a thin covering of soil and maritime grassland. Beneath it is the nesting space that makes the May so important to puffins; towards the west, the harder outline of the island rises into cliffs. The distinction between the visible surface and what lies below becomes unusually consequential here. In 2026, researchers estimated 36,500 occupied puffin burrows, down from 52,000 in 2024. We can stand in a busy colony and still be looking at a population that has suffered a serious recent decline.
Those figures need their units attached. Skomer’s 52,019 count records individual birds; the May’s 36,500 records occupied burrows. We cannot divide one by the other and produce a useful verdict on which island has more puffins. Their significance lies in the different local trajectories and in the work that makes those trajectories visible. The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology’s long-term seabird study on the May began in 1973. A visitor has an afternoon; the researchers have generations of observations to bring to the question.
That record makes the food coming ashore more interesting. Species, size and nutritional quality all matter, as does the time at which suitable prey becomes available. A handsome billful is not automatically evidence that feeding conditions are good. Researchers have also identified marine heatwaves and intense storms as likely contributors to poor survival in several recent winters. Much of the difficulty may happen while the birds are far away from the burrows we are carefully walking around. The colony gives us a place to watch them, but it cannot show us the whole cause of their fortunes.
The May rewards a substantial landing because its interest extends beyond one patch of puffin ground. We have room to walk, pause at the older structures and bring the wider seabird colony into the visit. The conventional excursion from Anstruther allows roughly two and a half to three hours ashore; the guided RIB option leaves from North Berwick and has a different rhythm. We choose the departure and vessel to suit the journey, then keep the rest of the island day simple: food, water, suitable footwear and enough attention left for the paths. The visitor centre has toilets, but there is no island café.
PLAN YOUR ISLE OF MAY VISIT
Anstruther Pleasure Cruises, May Princess
For the Fife-based island day
A conventional passenger boat with toilets and a snack bar, followed by approximately two and a half to three hours ashore. This is our choice for independent exploration from Anstruther, especially when an open RIB is unappealing. The published adult fare is £40, subject to next-season confirmation. The vessel is unsuitable for wheelchair users and does not permit dogs, including assistance dogs. Choose the landing product, not the shorter cruise around the island.
Scottish Seabird Centre
For a guided trip from North Berwick
Its four-hour excursion uses a 12-seat RIB and includes a guide on the island, with a pass by Bass Rock when conditions allow. Choose it for the East Lothian departure and guided interpretation, rather than assuming it is the same trip as the Anstruther ferry. The published adult fare is £70 and the minimum passenger height is 1.3 metres. Bring waterproofs and check the operator’s mobility and health restrictions before booking.
5. Lunga, Treshnish Isles
Staying long enough to see beyond the puffins
At Corran Lunga, the boulder landing makes us pay attention before the birdwatching begins. The passage from pontoon to rock is a practical introduction to an island without visitor facilities or formal paths. Good footwear has a purpose here beyond completing the outfit. We make our way towards the grassy slopes, where the puffin colony supplies the familiar attraction, but the island ahead is larger and more complicated than that first view suggests.
We continue beyond the main puffin area towards Harp Rock. The route narrows, and after roughly half a kilometre the sea stack is separated from us by a deep chasm. The birds here hold our attention differently. Guillemots, razorbills, shags and kittiwakes occupy the rock, and we work across it with the binoculars, exchanging the easy appeal of a single puffin for the slower pleasure of picking out a crowded colony. This is the part of Lunga that makes us grateful for a longer landing. Turning back after the first portraits would mean missing a substantial change in the island, reached on foot rather than through another boat journey.
Lunga also resists the easy description “untouched”. In the north of the island are the remains of homes, barns and a kiln, the material outline of a small community. The last residents of the Treshnish Isles left in 1857. Looking across an uninhabited island, we are still looking across somewhere people organised into places to live and work.
Back among the puffin slopes, we keep the National Trust for Scotland’s minimum two-metre separation from the birds and give the burrowed ground a wider berth whenever it needs one. The possibility of a close view does not make the colony a place to spread equipment wherever the composition demands. We leave room along the route and move on when our presence appears to obstruct a bird. The island’s appeal is precisely this proximity to a working colony; preserving the conditions that allow it is part of the visit.
What we are buying here, above all, is time ashore. A longer Lunga-focused trip allows the puffins, Harp Rock and the wider island to share the day; a combined excursion trades some of that time for Staffa. We favour the longer landing when birds are the purpose of the journey. The two-island version makes more sense when the holiday is about Mull and its surrounding islands as a whole. Neither choice removes the need to negotiate the landing, carry provisions and confirm what the sea and current access arrangements will allow.
PLAN YOUR LUNGA VISIT
Turus Mara
For more time on Lunga
The Big Bird Trip from Ulva Ferry on Mull advertises around four hours ashore on Lunga, subject to conditions. This is our pick when sustained birdwatching or photography is the priority. Staffa is included as a cruise past rather than a second landing, a deliberate trade-off that protects the island time. The currently published adult fare is £95; confirm the new season’s rate and arrangements for reaching Ulva Ferry.
Staffa Tours
For a south-Mull or Iona departure
The Fionnphort/Iona itinerary schedules about two hours on Lunga within a six-hour excursion, making it useful when those departure points fit your stay. Its advertised programme also includes Staffa, and the published adult fare is £85. Confirm that secondary landing before booking: the operator’s site carries a maintenance warning, so it should not be treated as guaranteed. Choose this for the broader island day, with less time devoted to Lunga itself.
6. Sumburgh Head, Shetland
A colony we can come back to
At Sumburgh Head, we have arrived by road, and the absence of a boat timetable changes the way we look. There is no need to divide an allocated hour between the first promising view and everything beyond it. The headland is at the southern end of Shetland’s Mainland, with the lighthouse above and the colony occupying the edges below. We can follow the reserve’s permitted routes, return to a viewpoint and allow one part of the visit to take longer than expected.
Along the clifftops, sandy soil gives puffins the ground they need to excavate. Their nesting space sits within the turf, while other birds make use of the rock faces and different parts of the headland. We look across the grass before concentrating on the water, keeping the burrow entrances in mind. It is a quieter kind of attention than chasing every movement over the sea, and it makes the site more intelligible. A promising puffin view begins with the right habitat, not simply with the largest expanse of cliff.
We turn towards the lighthouse, built by Robert Stevenson in 1821 with double-thickness walls to keep out the damp. The builders were under no illusion about the conditions their keepers would face. Beneath this more recent history is Old Red Sandstone: a now-inaccessible quarry in the cliffs exposes sediments from a lake that existed about 385 million years ago, including fossilised fish. The headland supporting our view has its own aquatic past. We give the lighthouse buildings some of the afternoon, instead of allowing them to remain an attractive shape at the edge of the binoculars.
There is a limit to the convenience argument. Reaching Shetland requires a substantial air or sea journey, so this is hardly a clever way to avoid a short boat trip elsewhere in Britain. Its strength is as part of a longer stay, with time to return to the colony and explore the wider islands. The ramped lookout near the car park and the steep approach to the lighthouse also need to be considered as separate routes. We choose our visit accordingly, keeping enough room in the Shetland itinerary to come back rather than asking one afternoon to settle our interest in the place.
PLAN YOUR SUMBURGH HEAD VISIT
RSPB Sumburgh Head
For an independent visit
Free reserve access and no wildlife-boat crossing once on Shetland’s Mainland make this the flexible choice for visitors with their own transport. Choose your pace and use the viewpoint appropriate to your access needs. The ramped lookout is near the main car park; the uphill lighthouse route is a different proposition. Check seasonal toilet and visitor-facility opening before travelling.
Shetland Explorer Tours
For transport and a broader introduction
The Puffins & Ponies Tour combines Sumburgh Head with South Mainland scenery, Shetland ponies and refreshments or lunch. The advertised four-hour coach trip suits someone wanting a guided overview, rather than four hours devoted to puffin photography. Its currently published adult price is £65. The operator warns of a steep walk from coach parking, so check suitability and the season’s available dates before booking.
The part of the puffin’s life beyond our visit
Back over the map, the neatness of a breeding-colony itinerary begins to look slightly misleading. A 2011 tracking study obtained usable winter journeys from 18 Skomer puffins, using light-level geolocators. The birds travelled in strikingly different directions: some towards Greenland, others into more southerly Atlantic waters, with some later entering the Mediterranean. Individuals could repeat their own routes between years. The sample was small and the tracking imprecise compared with GPS, but it showed how little a shared summer address tells us about the rest of a puffin’s year.
That makes the map useful for understanding the bird, but less useful as a winter travel plan. The British Trust for Ornithology describes puffins as predominantly ocean-going in winter; records near the coast can involve storm-blown birds rather than a reliably watchable colony. Even the familiar face changes. Outside the breeding season the bill loses much of its colour and the face becomes greyer. We are looking for the same species in a different setting, not simply the summer spectacle shifted to a warmer destination. A winter holiday to a famous nesting island is therefore a poor substitute for getting the breeding season right.
That is why the close encounters deserve more than a tally of sightings. The Atlantic puffin is globally classed as Vulnerable and is on the UK’s Red List of birds of conservation concern. Breeding success depends on appropriate food arriving at the right time; adult survival depends on conditions well beyond the island. The sandeel-fishing closures introduced in Scottish waters and the English North Sea in 2024 address one pressure on the seabirds’ food supply, not every consequence of a changing ocean.
A useful question for a warden is not simply how many puffins are present, but how breeding has gone this year. Have the chicks fledged successfully? What fish have the adults been bringing ashore? Does the latest count fit a longer pattern? Those questions give us something more worthwhile to take home than a number copied from a sign. A crowded slope tells us that birds are present; it cannot, by itself, tell us how well they have fed their young or what happened at sea last winter.
Our own contribution is less complicated. We can obey the paths and temporary restrictions, keep equipment away from burrows, follow biosecurity instructions and stop treating a bird that pauses near us as permission to stay indefinitely. On Skomer, the visitor code specifically asks us to limit time at busy spots. Leaving space is something a visitor can actually do. The bird gets on with feeding its chick; the research teams continue the much longer work of finding out how that life is changing.
For another encounter, Iceland, Newfoundland and Norway offer three rewarding ways to see Atlantic puffins beyond Britain. These are breeding destinations in their own right, not places to intercept the particular birds leaving Skomer or the Farnes. June and July provide a useful planning overlap, although each colony has its own season. We choose between them according to the visit: purpose-built viewing platforms in East Iceland, a shore-based colony in Newfoundland, or an evening walk above the Norwegian coast.
COUNTRYLOOK / BEYOND BRITAIN
Three more places to see puffins
01 / ICELAND
Borgarfjörður Eystri
For close observation from established viewing platforms
At Hafnarhólmi, beside the harbour, wooden platforms and a shelter bring visitors close to the nesting ground without requiring a boat crossing. Puffins share the site with kittiwakes, fulmars and eiders, so there is good reason to keep looking after the first portrait. We favour this stop as part of an East Iceland journey, particularly for patient birdwatching and photography. The constructed route matters: it gives us access without turning the burrowed turf into a footpath. Stay behind the barriers rather than pursuing a closer angle.
When: Aim for May to July; the usual season extends from mid-April into August. Access: Harbour-side viewing with stairs and platforms. Check the precise route for mobility requirements.
02 / CANADA
Elliston, Newfoundland
For watching from land on the Bonavista Peninsula
A short coastal path brings us within viewing distance of a rocky puffin colony, with no wildlife cruise needed. Birds sometimes land near visitors, but binoculars are a better plan than assuming one will pose beside the camera. We like Elliston for the freedom to linger and return during a wider exploration of the Bonavista Peninsula. The village’s traditional root cellars give the visit another subject: these earth-covered stores kept vegetables through Newfoundland winters. Leave time for the place as well as the birds, and keep well back from the cliff edge.
When: June and July are sensible choices; birds usually arrive around mid-May and leave between mid-August and early September. Access: A short outdoor walk from Maberly Road. Wear sound footwear; donations support the viewing site.
03 / NORWAY
Runde, Sunnmøre
For an evening walk to the bird cliffs
Runde asks us to organise the day differently. The Environmental Centre recommends evenings during the breeding season, when puffins return after feeding at sea; a midday stop can miss much of the activity. The usual approach from Goksøyr follows designated paths towards the bird cliffs, with stone paving and boardwalks protecting parts of the moor. We choose it for walkers who want the landscape to be part of the encounter, rather than a level viewpoint beside a car park. Stay on the marked route and outside the signed or fenced bird sanctuaries.
When: June or July, favouring an evening visit; local guidance recommends April to July overall. Access: A hillside walk from Goksøyr. Bring walking footwear and weatherproof layers, and check current conditions before setting out.
Season dates vary with the colony and the year. Check local access and recent sightings before making a special journey; none of these is a winter colony-viewing destination.
British visitor and provider information checked on 2 November 2026; overseas visitor information checked on 3 November 2026. Prices are published reference rates, not promises of unchanged 2027 fares. Confirm the season, landing arrangements, access requirements and cancellation terms with the provider. Wildlife sightings are never guaranteed.
Countrylook / A closer look
The puffin, in ten surprises
Swipe or scroll through the cards to explore all ten facts.
01 / 10
The same wings work underwater
Puffins use their wings to propel themselves beneath the surface, pursuing small fish through the water. The busy flight above the waves belongs to a bird whose wings must also work against the much greater resistance of the sea.
02 / 10
One ringed puffin reached 42
The BTO records an Atlantic puffin at 42 years and 21 days old, a record set in 2019. An individual can survive through decades of breeding seasons; the familiar little bird is not necessarily a young one.
03 / 10
Parenthood can wait five years
The BTO gives around five years as the typical age of first breeding. A young puffin usually has several years of surviving at sea ahead of it before its own first attempt to raise a chick.
04 / 10
One egg is the usual clutch
A puffin normally lays a single egg. The season’s nesting effort is usually concentrated on raising one chick, known as a puffling, rather than dividing food between a large brood.
05 / 10
The famous bill is a seasonal look
The conspicuous bill of a breeding adult becomes duller outside the breeding season. Our familiar summer portrait therefore shows a particular phase of the bird’s appearance, not how it looks throughout its months at sea.
06 / 10
Its mouth grips slippery cargo
Backward-facing structures in the roof of a puffin’s mouth help it retain fish. That specialised grip allows an adult to return with several prey items in one billful instead of carrying a single fish per journey.
07 / 10
Neighbours can take different winter routes
Tracking research on Skomer revealed markedly different winter journeys among birds from the same colony. Some travelled towards Greenland, others much farther south, while individuals could repeat their own routes from year to year.
08 / 10
Pufflings leave after dark
Young puffins usually leave their nesting burrows at night. Artificial lights can disorientate them: around the Firth of Forth, some head towards mainland towns instead of the open sea and need specialist help to reach safety.
09 / 10
Bill-rubbing is part of the reunion
Puffin pairs may greet one another by rubbing their bills together, a behaviour called billing. It is part of their breeding-season social life, accompanying their return to the colony and reunion with a partner.
10 / 10
Two birds started a tool-use debate
Two puffins, in Wales and Iceland, were reported holding sticks against their bodies. Researchers interpreted this as scratching with tools; other scientists questioned whether simpler explanations had been excluded. The observations are intriguing, but their interpretation remains debated.