Earlier this month, we spent two days in the Farne Islands, home to one of the world’s largest Puffin colonies. The census count last year showed about 45,000 breeding pairs, mostly on two of the tiny islands in the group.
The Farne Islands lie about two miles off the England’s east coast, just south of the border with Scotland. They are controlled by the National Trust, which is somewhat analogous to our National Park Service. Most of the workers we saw there were young scientists and college-aged scientists-in-training. For details on how you can visit, I suggest you visit https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/farne-islands.
You’re able to get quite close to the puffins—as near as a few feet. They’re quite oblivious to the people who come there every day in the late spring and summer to take their pictures.
They’re quite sociable, but it’s no singles scene. Puffins mate for life. The nest in burrows. Each spring, a pair lays one egg. It takes about 40 days to hatch. Then the baby—called a pufflet—spends another 40 days in the burrow.
Pufflets need about six weeks to get their flight feathers. Only then are the safe from predators, mostly seagulls. It also takes about that long for their colors to come in.
Their diet is mainly sand eels. They’ll stay on their breeding ground until late July or early August, then head out to sea. They won’t set foot on dry land again until the next spring!