With Eugene Daly

The Puffin is a small seabird, a member of the Auk family, measuring about 12 inches in length and seven inches wingspan outstretched. They are well loved because of their brightly coloured bills and their friendly manner.

Once known as Sea Parrots or Lundys, they are unmistakable, black on top, white underbellies and enormous bills. They are very amiable birds and are unknown to most people as they nest on remote cliffs and islands in huge colonies and spend most of the year at sea. Other names for the Puffin include ‘clown pope’ and in Irish canán dearg and puifín.

Its ponderous beak seems out of proportion to the rest of its face, giving it a clown-like appearance. The beak increases in size during the long spring mating season, the varied and beautiful colours becoming more pronounced and vivid, bright orange mixed with red and blue stripes. The colours remain until winter, when a portion of the heavy beak is shed, a process repeated at the next mating season.

In Inuit (Eskimo) culture some tribes would collect Puffin bills and create a musical instrument called ‘a shaker’ which was supposed to have magical powers to heal the sick.
Late in spring the hen lays one large white egg, to be hatched underground, safe from the prying eyes of the arch marauder, the great black-backed gull. The underground nest site is usually a narrow tunnel expertly constructed beneath a mound of peat-like soil, the residue of many centuries of decaying sea-pinks and also the yellow and white samphire.

With only its great strong beak, short legs and little sharp-toed, webbed feet as tunnelling tools, the little bird must be praised for its engineering skills, so deeply ingrained in its nature.

A disused rabbit burrow can also become a ready-made nesting place. In some cultures mice could not live in the puffin’s nesting material so in wintertime it was collected and brought indoors where mice were a problem.
Puffins are very affectionate birds. They do not dive from the sky but submerge and swim beneath the surface for long periods, searching for sprats, sand eels and other mini-species. They use their large bills to store fish temporarily as they hunt under water.

Puffins generally mate for life but go their separate ways at the end of the breeding season and reunite again the following year to use the same nesting burrows.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own