Horned Puffin

Fascinating facts about the Horned Puffin

• Horned puffins can launch themselves from cliffs or sprint across the sea to catch a 30-meter dive, then stay underwater for over a minute as if they were flying with their wings as oars. Their webbed feet act like a rudder while a waterproof oil from the uropygial gland keeps feathers sleek, letting them glide through water without losing heat.
• At just 20 cm tall and 500 g heavy, the horned puffin's bill grows larger each year, reaching its brightest yellow-orange hue at five years, the age when they finally breed. The bill's outer layer fluoresces under ultraviolet light, a signal only visible to other puffins, who can see UV rays. This glow helps mates spot each other during courtship.
• Horned puffins nest in rock crevices rather than burrows, spacing nests about 1.5 m apart on steep cliffs. Each pair lays a single, lavender-spotted egg that both parents incubate for roughly 41 days, then feed the chick whole fish directly from the bill for the next 35-40 days. By the time the chick fledges at night, it can already regulate its own body temperature.
• The global population tops 1.2 million birds, with 760 000 breeding on the Alaska Peninsula alone. In Alaska, 250 000 individuals occupy 608 colonies, the largest on Suklik Island, while the Semidi Islands host about 350 000 breeders. Such massive numbers concentrated on isolated islands make accurate counts tough, but they also highlight the species' reliance on specific cliff habitats that, if disturbed, could cause sharp local declines.
• Horned puffins have been found with mercury, cadmium, PCBs and organochlorine pesticides in their livers, contaminants they inherit from the fish they eat. Although bycatch in gillnets once killed tens of thousands, stricter monitoring since the 1990s has curbed this threat. Still, rising ocean temperatures are boosting their reproductive rate, showing how climate shifts can both help and endanger this seabird's future.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

Horned Puffin photographed on Feravox

More birds to discover

Browse Feravox