Atlantic Puffins: Interesting Facts about Them

Two adult puffins sitting next to each other

Puffins are some really loved birds, and that is fair enough, since they're really cute. However, there's not many people who know much about them or their close cousins. So today, we will be talking about some interesting facts about puffins and their cousins.

1. A Puffin's Family 

The most well known Puffins are the Atlantic Puffins, or scientifficaly Fratercula arctica. But did you know there are more puffins? The closest related puffin to the atlantic one is the Horned Puffin or Fratercula corniculata, which phylogenetically can be considered somithing like a brother to our atlantic puffins.

A pair of Horned Puffins 

They indeed look identical to their Atlantic counterparts, however one of their main differences is the colours in their beak.They are also only found in the other side of the arctic circle, specifically in the Area Between North America and Russia.

Now, these two "Brother Puffins" have a cousin, the Tufted Puffins (Fratercula cirrhata), which is a visibly different kind of puffin. It doesn't have a  completely white "face" like its cousins do, but instead has some white tuft. Adults of this species also seem to lack a white belly.

A tufted puffin

2. Puffins nest in burrows

A puffin in its nest

Did you know that puffins actually breed with the same mate every year? They also only lay one egg at a time, and it happens so that they can only breed when they're 4 years of age or older! This is not something good for the population of the species, however evolution has found its way, as it always does. Thankfully, puffins nest in burrows they dig themselves! Another good thing is that both parents take care of the egg, so they can both rest and hunt!

3. An extinct cousin of our puffins!

Atlantic Puffins also have another cousin, which is called "Dow's Puffin"(Fratercula dowi). We don't know much about it, however we know it lived during the late pleistocene (around 0.046-0.012 million years ago).

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