A Search For Puffins: Our Road Trip To Oregon

‘Clowns of the Ocean’ and ‘Sea Parrot’ are a few of the nicknames that the seafaring birds are called. Placed in the family Alcidae along with murres, murrlets, and guillemots, puffins are awesome. Their elusiveness, uniqueness, and importance to the environment make puffins different from other birds. The puffins are also really adorable. There are only four species of puffin in the world. Only three of these birds have the word puffin in their name, but the 4th puffin is a…Rhinoceros Auklet! 

Puffins are Unique

The most unique part about a puffin is their bill. They dig burrows with their beaks, which can also carry 30 fish at once, attract mates, and dissipate heat while the puffin is flying. Puffin beaks also lose their color. Puffins are adorable. The following links will bring to some of the websites that I used to research puffins.

Tufted Puffin Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Puffin FAQs

Rhinoceros Auklet Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Tufted Puffin | Audubon Field Guide

Tufted puffin – Wikipedia

Tufted Puffin – eBird

Puffin Cam – Friends of Haystack Rock

Tufted Puffins on Haystack Rock | Cannon Beach Oregon

‘Sea Parrots’ are Also Important to the Environment

Puffins indicate overfishing by bringing home less fish than usual. According to David Allan Sibley’s What It’s Like To Be A Bird, ammonia particles in guano ( a word for bird poop) in the Arctic seabird colonies is an important part in cloud formation, cooling the region. Gross! Puffins are being impacted by climate change. As the oceans warm, puffins are losing important food sources such as sand eel.

My Experience

When there are only one to three pairs of nesting puffins each year and sometimes they’re nesting on the other side of Haystack Rock, what is the chance you will see a puffin? Very low! It also doesn’t help that they can stay underwater for long periods of time. Puffins are able to dive 200 feet and stay underwater for a whole minute. Two years in a row we searched for puffins. The first year was unsuccessful, rain, high tide, and wind prevented us from getting a good view. The second year however, was sunny, bright, and we arrived at low tide. A large group of people were looking at the cliff and there was a red car with a puffin on it. Papa and I ran all the way there before I noticed mom still had my binos! Still I was the first one to see the puffins. We were very excited to see some puffins and we all helped Lucy spot the two puffins.

Puffins are awesome, unique, adorable, elusive, and important to the environment. I will never look at puffins the same way again after our search for puffins.