![]() The Tufted puffin is a familiar bird on the coasts of the Russian Pacific coast, where it is known as Toporok (Топорок) – meaning "small axe," a hint to the shape of the bill.Tufted puffins can breed in huge colonies and one such colony was recorded off the coast of British Columbia where congregated over 25,000 pairs.Tufted puffins usually dive for 30 seconds but are able to stay underwater for up to a minute.Using their wings, they "fly" underwater through schools of fish, capturing up to 10 or even more in their bills at a time. The wings of Tufted puffins are relatively short, adapted for diving, underwater swimming, and capturing prey rather than gliding, of which they are incapable.Tufted puffins are known as the “parrots of the sea” due to their beautiful bright coloring during the summer breeding season.These three puffins belong to the genus Fratercula the name comes from the Medieval Latin and refers to the black and white plumage which resembles monastic robes and means “little brother”. The Tufted puffin differs from Atlantic puffin and Horned puffin by its mostly black body.The Tufted puffin was first described in 1769 by German zoologist Peter Simon Pallas.But it is already evident that changing rhythms and life-cycles are affecting sea birds along the North Sea coastline. The exact impact of climate change on the future of seabirds is still unclear. A lot of conservation action which does take place is not backed up by a really robust evidence-based approach," he noted. "There's a lot of really excellent work about how climate change is going to impact sea birds, but less so on what we can really do about it. Flooding due to sea level rise can really affect low-lying species which nest on beaches, changes in storm patterns can cause mass mortalities," said Henry Hakkinen, a Researcher at the Zoological Society of London and one of the report's writers. "Heatwaves during the summer often really badly impact a lot of seabirds. That's having a big, detrimental effect on their population."Ī recent joint report by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds called for a better understanding of how to counter climate related issues that affect seabirds. "So, they're not getting as much food and nutrition for themselves and for their young. "Sand eels are coming out of hibernation earlier in the year, not at the peak time when puffins need to be breeding and feeding their chicks," Rummery explained. Puffins spend months at sea, flying up to a hundred kilometers to fish. But the North Sea temperature has recently risen by around one degree, changing the life cycle and availability of fish, in particularly the puffin's favorite meal, the sand eel. So, to think we could lose our puffins by kind of 90 percent is horrifying," said Poppy Rummery, the Visitor Experience Officer at Bempton. "Our population here is looking relatively stable, but that's not consistent across the whole of the UK. The UK is home to around ten percent of the world's puffins and certainly this bird is no stranger to birdwatchers at Bempton Cliffs.īut the puffin is on the UN's red list of endangered species and a recent report found numbers in the UK could drop by around 90 per cent over the next 30 years, because of changes to the marine environment caused by global warming. At least half of the world's seabird population is now thought to be in decline. The sight of cliffs crammed full of bird life is a deceptively positive one. But it's puffins with their brightly colored striped beaks and orange feet, that stand out, for now. This windswept stretch of North Sea coastline is a haven for breeding seabirds - gannets, razorbills, kittiwakes and many more species crowd onto the cliffs to nest every year. At the Bempton Cliffs reserve in northeast England, thousands of seabirds perch precariously on the jagged cliffs, a chorus of birdsong almost drowning out the sound of waves crashing onto the rocks below.
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