The Puffin

The puffins found in Foula are Atlantic puffins, Fratercula arctica. The Foula name for a puffin is the 'tammie norie'. There are approximately 20,000 breeding pairs in the island. They are members of the Auk family Alcidae, along with Razorbills, Common Guillemots and Black Guillemots.

Auks have short stumpy wings shaped like paddles to help them swim underwater to catch food. This means their wings are small in relation to their body size so they have to beat their wings very fast to fly. This makes them very vulnerable in flight to predators like the bonxie. Puffins have specially adapted beaks for carrying different types and numbers of fish and crustaceans. They feed by day diving into shoals of fish and can carry a large number at a time by lining them up in the serrated edges of their colourful beaks. A puffin has been recorded carrying 30 fish in a single load!

It's very hard work for adult puffins to feed their young because they have to fly huge distances far out to sea to forage for food. Puffins therefore attempt to raise only one single chick per breeding season. Because they breed so slowly they are long-lived birds, and can live for up to 25 years if they make it past the difficult early years of life.

Puffins spend the winter in the North Sea, and start arriving in Foula from early April onwards. They like to nest in colonies in burrows on grassy slopes, and rock crevices in the cliffs. They lay a single white egg about 60mm long in a lined nest sometimes 2 metres underground. The adults take turns to incubate the egg while the other is foraging for food.

Puffin "hovering" in updraft

The chick hatches in May after about 6 weeks incubation. The chicks are fed by both parents, mostly on whole small fish, mainly sandeel. Adult puffins abandon their chicks shortly before they're due to fledge, and by late August when they are 5-6 weeks old the chicks leave their burrows at night to avoid predation by bonxies and gulls.

Puffins look different in their winter plumage - they lose their brightly coloured bill which becomes darker and smaller and narrows in at the base Round the eyes becomes less striking, their faces change to dark grey, and the bright orange feet fade to yellow. As a result in earlier times the winter puffin was thought to be a different species.

Up until the 1950's puffins were harvested by islanders for food with each croft traditionally having the right to work their section of cliffs. Eggs and birds were taken in sustainable quantities to ensure the resource was protected for future seasons The young birds were plucked and split down the breast and roasted on a brand-iron over glowing peat embers, the natural fat and oils hissing and spitting in the fire giving off a tantalizing aroma, and were delicious to eat.

Foula men were well-known as skilled climbers and would scale the high cliffs with ropes all over the island for eggs and birds, earning themselves the nickname 'Foula Nories'. Tradition has it that a Foula man scaled the Heights of Quebec assisting General Wolfe to capture that city.

Depending on the weather and time of day,
puffins may be seen at the locations marked with a

PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL NEAR THE CLIFF EDGES

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