Lunch Time
Puffins enjoy a menus of sand eels, whitebait or fish larvae. What are you having?
To catch food, the puffin dives from the water’s surface, using its wings like paddles to ‘fly’ down to great depths to catch sand eels or other fish. Underwater, a puffin looks to be swimming in a silvery air bubble because the air in the feathers is partly forced out.
The puffin’s large beak and mouth has backward pointing spikes which enable it to catch as many as ten small fish one after the other, without swallowing them, and hold them crosswise. (Young People’s Trust for the Environment.)
Check out more at the Audubon’s Puffin Project.
