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Atlantic puffin with fish. Like many auks, puffins eat both fish and zooplankton but feed their chicks primarily with small marine fish several times a day. The puffins are distinct in their ability to hold several (sometimes over a dozen) small fish at a time, crosswise in their bill, rather than regurgitating swallowed fish.
Seals have been known to kill puffins, and large fish may also do so. Most puffin colonies are on small islands, and this is no coincidence, as it avoids predation by ground-based mammals such as foxes, rats, stoats, weasels, cats, and dogs. When they come ashore, the birds are still at risk and the main threats come from the sky. [16]: 102–103
Puffinus is a Neo-Latin loanword based on the English "puffin". The original Latin term for shearwaters was usually the catchall name for sea-birds, mergus . [ 8 ] " Puffin" and its variants, such as poffin, pophyn and puffing, [ 9 ] referred to the cured carcass of the fat nestling of the shearwater, a former delicacy. [ 10 ]
Adult horned puffins are quite general in their diet, feeding on fish, small invertebrates, crustaceans, polychaete worms and squid. [24] They also feed on small algae and marine plants. [25] To catch fish, horned puffins dive down to about 30 meters (98 ft), pursuing prey mostly taking place at 15 meters (49 ft) in depth.
The scientific name of this species records a name shift: Manx shearwaters were called Manks puffins in the 17th century. Puffin is an Anglo-Norman word (Middle English pophyn) for the cured carcasses of nestling shearwaters. The Atlantic puffin acquired the name much later, possibly because of its similar nesting habits.
Strong-swimming murres hunt faster, schooling fish, whereas auklets take slower-moving krill. Time depth recorders on auks have shown that they can dive as deep as 100 m (330 ft) in the case of Uria guillemots, 40 m (130 ft) for the Cepphus guillemots and 30 m (98 ft) for the auklets.
Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video have both pre-bought “Puffins Impossible,” a spinoff of the animated short form series “Puffins” voiced by Johnny Depp, who is reprising his role as Johnny ...
The name "puffin" is thought to originate from the Middle English term "pophyn," which was used in the Middle Ages to describe the fatty, preserved young shearwaters that were prepared as food. Since shearwaters and Atlantic puffins ( Fratercula arctica ) often nest in close proximity, the name 'puffin' was mistakenly applied to the Atlantic ...