Global Range: BREEDING: High arctic in eastern Canada and western Greenland south to Gulf of Maine (Matinicus Rock, Eastern Egg Rock, Seal Island) and from Iceland, Spitzbergen, Novaya Zemyla, and northwestern Russia south to northern France. NON-BREEDING: widely dispersed offshore, mostly in boreal waters, south to Massachusetts and Canary Islands (AOU 1983).

Greenland and Northern Canada, Gulf of St. Lawrence, Nova Scotia, Iceland, Northern Scandinavia, Northern Russia, Ireland, and NW coast of France.

Biogeographic Regions: nearctic (Native ); palearctic (Native )

occurs (regularly, as a native taxon) in multiple nations

Canada

Origin: Native

Regularity: Regularly occurring

Currently: Present

Confidence: Confident

Type of Residency: Breeding

United States

Origin: Native

Regularity: Regularly occurring

Currently: Present

Confidence: Confident

Type of Residency: Breeding

Sexes are alike--11 1/2 to 13 1/2 inches long with a wingspread of 21-24 inches. These puffins are short, stocky with upper parts black and undersides white. Their cheeks are white. They have large parrotlike, triangular shaped bills, which in the breeding season are bright orange with a yellow-bordered patch of blue at the rear half. After the breeding season, they lose some of their horny bill plates and molt as well. Winter plumage is similar but faces are largely dark.

Average mass: 490.5 g.

Length: 32 cm

Weight: 381 grams

• Terrestrial
• Marine

During the summer, common puffins reside on rocky cliffs of the North Atlantic and northern Europe. They winter far at sea on deep, icy water and are seldom seen within sight of land until March.

Aquatic Biomes: benthic ; coastal

Comments: Nonbreeding: primarily pelagic (AOU 1983). Most breeding colonies are on earthy islands where nests are in burrows (dug by puffin, rabbit, or other sea bird); in northern and central range large colonies occur among boulders; small populations may nest on cliff sites; usually uses nest site used in previous year. Tends to avoid areas used by great black-backed gull (preys on chicks and adults).

The species associated with this page are major players in the pelagic ecosystem of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Stellwagen Bank is an undersea gravel and sand deposit stretching between Cape Cod and Cape Ann off the coast of Massachussets. Protected since 1993 as the region’s first National Marine Sanctuary, the bank is known primarily for whale-watching and commercial fishing of cod, lobster, hake, and other species (Eldredge 1993). 

Massachusetts Bay, and Stellwagen Bank in particular, show a marked concentration of biodiversity in comparison to the broader coastal North Atlantic. This diversity is supported from the bottom of the food chain. The pattern of currents and bathymetry in the area support high levels of phytoplankton productivity, which in turn support dense populations of schooling fish such as sand lance, herring, and mackerel, all important prey for larger fish, mammals, and seabirds (NOAA 2010). Sightings of many species of whales and seabirds are best predicted by spatial and temporal distribution of prey species (Jiang et al 2007; NOAA 2010), providing support for the theory that the region’s diversity is productivity-driven.

Stellwagen Bank is utilized as a significant migration stopover point for many species of shorebird. Summer visitors include Wilson’s storm-petrel, shearwaters, Arctic terns, and red phalaropes, while winter visitors include black-legged kittiwakes, great cormorants, Atlantic puffins, and razorbills. Various cormorants and gulls, the common murre, and the common eider all form significant breeding colonies in the sanctuary as well (NOAA 2010). The community of locally-breeding birds in particular is adversely affected by human activity. As land use along the shore changes and fishing activity increases, the prevalence of garbage and detritus favors gulls, especially herring and black-backed gulls. As gull survivorship increases, gulls begin to dominate competition for nesting sites, to the detriment of other species (NOAA 2010). 

In addition to various other cetaceans and pinnipeds, the world’s only remaining population of North Atlantic right whales summers in the Stellwagen Bank sanctuary. Right whales and other baleen whales feed on the abundant copepods and phytoplankton of the region, while toothed whales, pinnipeds, and belugas feed on fish and cephalopods (NOAA 2010). The greatest direct threats to cetaceans in the sanctuary are entanglement with fishing gear and death by vessel strikes (NOAA 2010), but a growing body of evidence suggests that noise pollution harms marine mammals by masking their acoustic communication and damaging their hearing (Clark et al 2009).

General threats to the ecosystem as a whole include overfishing and environmental contaminants. Fishing pressure in the Gulf of Maine area has three negative effects. First and most obviously, it reduces the abundance of fish species, harming both the fish and all organisms dependent on the fish as food sources. Secondly, human preference for large fish disproportionately damages the resilience of fish populations, as large females produce more abundant, higher quality eggs than small females. Third, by preferentially catching large fish, humans have exerted an intense selective pressure on food fish species for smaller body size. This extreme selective pressure has caused a selective sweep, diminishing the variation in gene pools of many commercial fisheries (NOAA 2010). While the waters of the SBNMS are significantly cleaner than Massachusetts Bay as a whole, elevated levels of PCBs have been measured in cetaceans and seabird eggs (NOAA 2010). Additionally, iron and copper leaching from the contaminated sediments of Boston Harbor occasionally reach the preserve (Li et al 2010). 

Non-Migrant: No. All populations of this species make significant seasonal migrations.

Locally Migrant: Yes. At least some populations of this species make local extended movements (generally less than 200 km) at particular times of the year (e.g., to breeding or wintering grounds, to hibernation sites).

Locally Migrant: Yes. At least some populations of this species make annual migrations of over 200 km.

Birds breeding in Greenland and Newfoundland probably remain in the wstern Atlantic region (Brown 1985). Returns to breeding grounds in Maine in March (Cowger 1976), in Newfoundland around mid-April (Harris and Birkhead 1985), in Greenland first half of May.

Common puffins dive from the air or surface and use their wings to swim underwater where they catch small fish, mollusks, and crustaceans. They swallow their catch underwater unless they're feeding their young, at which time they can carry back as many as 30 fish at a time in their bills .

Comments: Summer diet mainly schooling fishes (herring, sandlance, capelin, gadids); importance of invertebrates (crustaceans, polychaetes) varies; chicks fed fishes; usually forages at depths of less than 60 m (Burger and Simpson 1986, Piatt and Nettleship 1985, Bradstreet and Brown 1985).

Note: For many non-migratory species, occurrences are roughly equivalent to populations.

Estimated Number of Occurrences: 81 to >300

>1,000,000 individuals

Comments: Global population 3.8-8.2 million, about half of which breed in Iceland (Nettleship and Evans 1985). North American population 350,000-400,000 breeding pairs (Rodway et al. 1996, Chardine 1999). Censuses in the 1970s and early 1980s yielded an estimate of about 365,000 breeding pairs in Canada/New England, mostly along the coasts of southeastern Newfoundland and Labrador; about 1100 pairs, Nova Scotia to Maine (population declined in late 1970s-early 1980s, Evans and Nettleship 1985). As of 1985, about 300 were breeding in Maine (Spendelow and Patton 1988). See Evans (1984) for population data from Greenland. Total population of F. A. GRAABE (European subspecies) estimated to be 901,000 (Lloyd et al. 1991).

Annual adult survival in each of several areas was 89% or more.

Comments: In low latitude colonies, adults do not feed young at night (Bradstreet and Brown 1985).

Average lifespan

Status: wild: 383 months.

During courtship, mates fight on the water, pairs bill and by fighting attract other pairs until the whole ceremony tapers off. They copulate on the water. Puffins nest in colonies and construct nests by burrowing into loose soil 2-4 feet deep at tops of cliffs or on islands. The males do most of the burrow digging, using their beaks and webbed feet. Males stay with the females through the breeding season, and the pairs often sit outside the burrow. Eggs are laid between June and July, and usually only one egg is laid per pair. Eggs are round, white, and often spotted with brown. Both parents incubate by tucking the egg under one wing and leaning their body against it. Incubation lasts around 42 days. The newly hatched are fed very small fish. About 40 days after the chicks have hatched, they are abandoned by the parents, who go to sea; the chicks fast for a week and then jump into the sea at dusk or night, diving for their own food until they can fly at about 49 days old.

Average time to hatching: 42 days.

Average eggs per season: 1.

Egg laying begins in late April in Maine, later in north. Some nest site holders do not breed. Clutch size is 1. Incubation, by both sexes, lasts about 6 weeks. Young are tended by both sexes, fledge at about 38-41 days (sometimes much longer). First breeds reportedly at 4-5 years or usually at 5+ years.

The beak of a puffin can carry many fish at once because the bird uses its tongue to hold the fish against serrations on the upper mandible.

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IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: least concern

Canada

Rounded National Status Rank: N5B - Secure

United States

Rounded National Status Rank: N1B - Critically Imperiled

Rounded Global Status Rank: G5 - Secure

Reasons: Widespread and abundant; large declines historically; populations now probably increasing overall, although local declines are occurring.

Global Short Term Trend: Relatively stable to increase of 25%

Comments: Global trend unknown. North American population probably growing, although local trends vary (Lowther et al. 2002).

Global Long Term Trend: Increase of 10-25% to decline of 70%

Comments: Historically, populations drastically reduced through egging and hunting (Nettleship and Evans 1985).

Comments: In Greenland, egg-collecting (and less importantly hunting and deaths in salmon gill nets) may be significant threats. Many drown in surface-set and bottom-set gill nets in the fishery off Newfoundland; mortality acute during period when capelin form dense spawning schools inshore (Piatt and Nettleship 1985). Affected by hunting in Newfoundland and Gulf of St. Lawrence; breeding success has been reduced in some areas due to competition with fisheries for common food resource (e.g., capelin) and to increased predation and kleptoparasitism by large gulls (Brown and Nettleship 1984). On islands off Labrador, colonizing arctic foxes preyed heavily on puffins and reduced their breeding success (Birkhead and Nettleship 1995).

Management Requirements: See Evans and Nettleship (1985) for management recommendations.

Has recolonized certain islands as result of reintroduction programs (e.g., began breeding on Eastern Egg Rock [Maine] after extensive transplants of young birds from Newfoundland, gull control, and use of models and vocalizations to attract puffins).

Management Research Needs: See Evans and Nettleship (1985) for research recommendations.

Each year, half a million common puffins are netted for food and their feathers in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

Comments: Eggs collected in Greenland (protective laws not observed) (Evans 1984).

Comments: Constitutes a superspecies with F. CORNICULATA (AOU 1983). Morphologic and genetic data (Moen 1991) cast doubt on the validity of the three subspecies, which were described solely on the basis of body size.