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Tufted Puffin — printable fact sheet
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Tufted Puffin
Fratercula cirrhata
The tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) is the largest of the three puffins, a sooty-black North Pacific auk that in the breeding season grows a white face mask, a huge orange bill and two long straw-coloured plumes that sweep back from behind the eyes. All of that is temporary.…
Did you know?
- Unlike many other seabirds, Tufted Puffins can carry multiple fish crosswise in their bills at once, thanks to a unique hinge in their jaws.
- A tufted puffin can carry twenty or more fish crosswise in its bill at once, pinning each one against backward-pointing spines on the roof of its mouth with its tongue. The huge orange bill and the golden head tufts are shed after breeding, and the winter bird looks drab and unrecognisable. It flies underwater with its wings, and the small wings that make this possible force it into a frantic 400-beats-per-minute flapping in air. The chick leaves the burrow alone at night and heads for the sea without ever being led there.
What I learned
Draw the tufted puffin
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