Puffins look a lot like Emperor and King penguins – they have white bellies with black backs and waddle around on orange, webbed feet.

Puffins are everybody’s favourite seabird and it’s not hard to see why. With their smart black and white plumage, comical walk and bright orange beaks, these small birds really stand out.

They are excellent swimmers that use their wings to stroke underwater with a flying motion. They steer with rudderlike webbed feet and can dive to depths of 200 feet, though they usually stay underwater for only 20 or 30 seconds. Puffins typically hunt small fish like herring or sand eels.

The puffin’s colourful beak is seasonal Puffins malt during their time at sea and shed all the colourful portions of their beaks as well as the black markings around their eyes in the process.

Puffins often live 20 years or more. The oldest known puffin lived to be 36 years.

Plans

Chiefly nesting on island cliffs, there is a well-known, mainland colony at our reserve in Bempton Cliffs, East Yorkshire. Prior to the breeding period, the adult birds return to their colonies but spend most of their time on the sea in large flocks known as ‘rafts’.

Predators and parasites Atlantic puffins are probably safer when out at sea. Here, the dangers are more often from below the water rather than above and puffins can sometimes be seen putting their heads under water to peer around for predators.

Puffin Island is not accessible to the public without the permission of the landowner, however there are boat trips around the island during the summer months from nearby Beaumaris.

Puffin Island has always boasted an abundance of marine life due to the strong currents in the area, particularly around the north coast. As the name would suggest, the island was notable for its puffins. Sadly, there are still only 8 breeding pairs of puffins on the island.

Dogs are welcome on all of the cruises (except the RIB Safari) and they can travel for free, although a small donation is encouraged. The Puffin Island Cruise is one of the shorter trips, lasting approximately 90 minutes, and this is the one that we decided to go on with Elsa.

Don’t expect to see many puffins though as the puffins from which the island gets its name were decimated by the accidental introduction of rats in the late 19th century. A poisoning programme to rid the island of its rats has helped the puffins recover in recent years.

“The name Lundy means ‘puffin island’ in Old Norse,” Green said, explaining that this is a legacy of the Viking raiders who used Lundy as a base of operations from the 8th Century AD, though they were far from the first inhabitants.

Near the beautiful Pembrokeshire coast, there is Skomer Island, a world-renowned wildlife paradise. This island is famous for puffins and the largest breeding colony of these birds in Southern Britain with around 10,000 breeding pairs of puffins on Skomer and Skokholm Islands. …

Anglesey has a good population of puffins, and one of the best places to see these charismatic birds is at South Stack. Puffins are communal birds that excavate burrows to nest in. Whilst they are ungainly on land, they are excellent swimmers, spending up to half of their lives at sea.

Puffins tend to live in burrows in short grass at the top of cliffs and feed on fish, making Lundy a great place to spot them because of the marine conservation area – where fishing is not allowed. There is a colony of puffins living at Jenny’s Cove on the island.

Machias Seal Island