Puffins: Clowns of the Sea
Whether they live along the Pacific or the Atlantic coast, puffins are unique seabirds.
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[audioplayer:63411|align:left|caption:The call of the tufted puffin.]
Although not a first-rate vocalist, the bird making this groan-like call is one of the most recognizable to the eye. These sounds belong to the tufted puffin.
Puffins are icons of the seabird world. With clown-like faces and huge, multicolored bills, they stand upright on sea cliffs along the northern oceans. Tufted puffins nest on islands and rough coastlines, from the Channel Islands of Southern California across the north Pacific to Siberia. If you see a puffin on the East Coast, it will be the Atlantic puffin. But you鈥檒l have to go a long way north, because they nest on islands in the Gulf of Maine and beyond.
A flexible hinge at the back of its jaw allows a puffin to hold a whole row of fish crosswise in its bill. And it can catch still more, even as it swims swiftly under water. And that鈥檚 not all. The puffin uses its massive bill to dig nest-burrows. The tufted puffin鈥檚 burrow might be up to six feet deep.
You, too, can dig deeper. Whether you missed an episode of BirdNote or want to listen again, you鈥檒l find all previous episodes on our website, . I鈥檓 Michael Stein.
Call of the Tufted Puffin provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by E.S. Booth; Ambient wave sound provided by C. Peterson; Producer: John Kessler; Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
漏 2012 Tune In to Nature.org July 2012 Narrator: Michael Stein