The Secret Lives of Puffins by Dominic Couzens & Mark Sisson

Author:Dominic Couzens & Mark Sisson [Couzens, Dominic & Sisson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408186695
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-04-16T23:00:00+00:00

Puffins live in each other’s pockets during the breeding season. In a dense colony, neighbours are never far away. And since puffins are long-lived birds, the same individuals may well breed side-by-side year upon year, which presumably can be a blessing or a curse!

Dense concentrations such as these are found on the periphery of the actual colonies. Most of the birds’ attending these so-called ‘clubs’ are young birds in their second or third years of life, still too young to breed.

If you do visit a puffin colony from mid-season onwards, you might find yourself watching something quite different to what you were expecting. That’s because a large number of non-breeding birds typically occupy the periphery of the colonies. They might stand or sit close to a burrow, but more often they have a section of cliff, or some rocky outpost to themselves. There may be tens or hundreds of birds seen there, often simply sitting or loafing about, but sometimes displaying in a half-hearted manner, leading you suspect, wrongly, that they are breeding birds. These communities of non-breeding birds are known, somewhat amusingly, as ‘clubs’. Most of the birds making up numbers are two to three year olds. The function of clubs is presumably for young birds to learn social mores in a colony situation, although it is not entirely impossible that first meeting between future mates could occur here. If you visit a colony in a temperate location in late June and July, most of the birds you see will probably be these non-breeders.

Not surprisingly, most of the really interesting and important behaviour in a puffin colony occurs in the early stages of breeding. Upon first arrival birds must lay claim to a territory, protect that territory, dig or refurbish a burrow and ensure that they have ground fit for an egg or a chick – and that is if they are already paired (see also next section). Those few days and weeks are momentous for the puffins, and truly exciting to witness. ›

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