It wasn’t for lack of trying that we saw few puffins in Elliston, Newfoundland, one of the most accessible places on land in North America to get close-up views of this charismatic seabird with its dazzling orange beak and matching foot colour, and tuxedo-style sleek-black topcoat and smooth white-shirted belly.

Newfoundland’s provincial bird, the puffin flocks to the eastern shoreline to feed, breed and nest from May to September. It’s the Oscars for five months of the year for these dapper seabirds. When breeding and nesting season ends, their technicoloured orange beaks fade to grey, and being pelagic, they spend the rest of the year at sea.

We knew the best times of the day to see puffins are early morning and late afternoon. Luckily, the Puffin Site is a short walk from the municipal park where we had camped in the motorhome we had rented for three weeks in Newfoundland.

As soon as we arrived, we walked to the top of the outcropping for an hour of puffin viewing before dinner, followed by a two-hour visit that evening (we were the last people to leave the site), and another trip the next morning where we took our first picture of puffins at 06:04 and the last one, reluctantly, at 08:41. I don’t know how many times one of us said to the other, “Let’s just stay five more minutes.”

We were in Elliston at prime time, mid-June when about 300 pairs of puffins were nesting, so we should have seen lots of them. (Because these lovebirds are monogamous for life, their population count is often referred to by pairs of puffins rather than individuals, unique in the animal kingdom.) They pair up at the age of five and can live for thirty years, time enough to celebrate their silver anniversary.

But they’re apart a lot. A puffin couple may not see each other until they return to their burrow after spending seven months mostly alone at sea.

Most birds can’t live at sea. They can’t sit on the water and would quickly get wet and cold and sink and drown. Puffins, however, have a built-in life jacket. Their short feathers trap a layer of air next to their skin that helps them stay afloat and keeps the cold water away from their skin. When they get hungry, they dive to depths of up to 75 m, gliding for as long as a minute in search of herring, capelin, eels, and sprats.

We did see many puffins. The problem was that our expectations were heightened by what we had read about, and seen photos of—puffins at Ellison within an arm’s length. Curious little birds cavorting so nearby, you could look into their soulful eyes. Like Kevin Pepper’s photos! 

No puffins came near us. Why could that be?

Here’s a thought…

Research from the University of New Brunswick has shown that the hatch date for puffins is two weeks later now, more toward the end of June than the middle. Perhaps every pair of puffins were vigilantly protecting their soon-to-be hatched egg, one on the nest, the other at the entrance to the burrow, instead of gambolling near us?

Does it matter? How lucky we were to have five hours puffining at Ellison.

Navigation

Elliston Puffin Site

Erludóttir, Lella. “Top Facts about Puffins.” Hey Iceland.

Frizzell, Peg. “The Astonishing Atlantic Puffin.” Fanny Sparks. Peg writes that researchers have observed puffins in Iceland and in Wales using a small wooden stick to scratch their bodies, the first report of any seabird, using a tool which “involved the direct manipulation of a detached object toward a specific part of the environment (the birds’ plumage) with a specific goal”.

Newfoundland Puffin Reports Facebook Page

Pepper, Kevin. A. “The Atlantic Puffin Colony in Elliston, Newfoundland.” Thanks to Kevin for allowing us to use his photos, this blog has hatched, fledged and soared. Visit his website at www.kevinpepperphotography.com or call him to book a photo tour at 1-519-221-5249.