“It’s a Bird!… It’s a Fish! …. It’s a Puffin!”

From this photo it is perhaps a bit more plausible that people once claimed puffins could be defined as a sort of fish or bird-fish hybrid.

Historically this was an effort to dodge the church prohibition of meat-eating on Fridays.

“It is eaten in Lent because in a measure it seems related to the fishes,” said one early writer, “in that it is cold-blooded. The English make the puffin a bird and no bird, or a bird-fish.”

(Source: Puffins, by Kenny Taylor)

Photo Courtesy of: animalsmuseum:

Puffin sous l’eau – Britain’s most ambitious nature photography project