I’m Puffed Out

I do love Puffins so while on the Isle of Mull I took a trip to Staffa Island. Some fun, surprising and alarming facts! 1) The name Puffin is thought to come from ‘puff’ 😂 2) The scientific name, Fratercula arctica means "little brother of the north" in Latin. Little brother as in 'little friar' referring to the black and white plumage 😂 3) On average a Puffin catch is around 10 fish per trip but the record in the UK is a whopping 62 fish at once! 😳 4) Most puffins live to at least 20 years old, do not breed until they are 5, lay only 1 egg each year, keep the same mate and use the same burrow as in previous years. And there’s no sexism in the Puffin world; male and female share the duties of incubating the egg and rearing the chick. 😊 5) The greatest natural predator of the puffin is the Great Black-backed Gull. A gull can catch adult puffins in mid-air. 😱 6) Us humans’ over-fishing has caused disaster for Puffin colonies as has our introduction of foxes or rats as Puffins do not have adaptations to avoid them. Puffins choose isolated islands to breed because there are no large predators on the ground to disturb their nesting. Uncontrolled tourism can be harmful to puffin colonies because they need solitude to breed. People who get too close may scare off parents from their duties of feeding their chick. Oh no! I was very close 😳