Edward Henry Wehnert

Part 3 introduces the theme of imprisonment. As we have said, the Ancient Mariner is doomed to be trapped in a state of deathlike life; his own immortal body is his prison. The natural world seems to have this power, as well: the sailors are trapped in the “rime” by impenetrable ice until the Albatross sets them free.

As such, after the Mariner kills the albatross, the rest of the crew suffers death at the hands of ghostly and supernatural figures. However, this is not technically the last we see of the crew, as their dead bodies are fantastically animated with supernatural powers to sail the Mariner home later on in the poem.

Overview. In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship — being followed by an albatross was generally considered a sign of good luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship (which indeed suffers terrible mishaps).

These remarkable birds live most of their lives on the ocean, migrating to coastal regions during breeding season. They’re also incredibly friendly, and serve as one of the best attractions on our tours.

Atlantic Puffin. Adopt a puffin today! For a donation of $100 or more you can become a part of a puffin’s life. When you adopt, you will receive a biography of a puffin including its most recent activities and a colorful certificate of adoption displaying your name.

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. Seals have been known to kill puffins and large fish may also do so.

“Overall they have quite a placid temperament—their mating rituals aren’t as aggressive as other seabirds and they seem more curious about humans than anything else.” But for all of their cute waddling, puffins the world over are facing some daunting environmental challenges.

Their beaks fall off? Well, not exactly. But when we see puffins, they are in their “breeding plumage” which includes more ornate and colourful elements on their beaks. As breeding season passes, the colourful elements at the base the beak fall off, making it look slimmer.

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

A group of puffins is known by a range of names – a colony, a puffinry, a circus, a burrow, a gathering, or an improbability. Puffins are very social birds, forming immense colonies together. The largest documented colony is made up of Atlantic Puffins, located in the Westmann Isles, part of Iceland.

A puffin chick is called a puffling. Puffins lay one egg that is incubated in turn by each adult for approximately 39-43 days (about six weeks!). After the egg hatches, the chick—called a puffling—stays in the burrow and awaits food from its parents.

Tool use in puffins may point to ‘underestimated’ intelligence in seabirds. The discovery, along with a similar observation in Wales in 2014, is the first evidence of tool use in seabirds. The findings suggest that seabirds like puffins may be more intelligent or possess greater problem-solving skills than once thought …

Puffins are not actually penguins! They are birds that look similar, but are not the same species. Puffins belong to a family of birds called Alcidae, while penguins belong to the family Spheniscidae; their wings evolved to support different functions.

Soaked in salt water, smoked with wood chips and dried sheep dung, then boiled for two hours in a sweet malt beverage before being refrigerated and finally served, bone-in and cold, alongside a packet of butter, smoked puffin tastes briny and a bit fishy and musky-sweet in the manner of mesquite barbecue.

Not extinct

Perhaps one of the most widely recognized extinct bird species is the dodo. It was a plump, flightless bird that lived solely on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

Moa, (order Dinornithiformes), any of several extinct ostrichlike flightless birds native to New Zealand and constituting the order Dinornithiformes. The number of different species is in dispute, estimates varying from 9 to 64.