Post by Eaglehawk on Nov 5, 2019 7:31:28 GMT
Atlantic (Common) Puffin - Fratercula arctica
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Subclass: Neornithes
Infraclass: Neognathae
Superorder: Neoaves
Order: Charadriiformes
Suborder: Lari
Family: Alcidae
Subfamily: Alcinae
Tribe: Fraterculini
Genus: Fratercula
Species: Fratercula arctica
The Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) is a seabird species in the auk family. It is a pelagic bird that feeds primarily by diving for fish, but also eats other sea creatures, such as squid and crustaceans. Its most obvious characteristic is its brightly coloured beak during the breeding seasons. Also known as the Common Puffin, it is the only puffin species which is found in the Atlantic Ocean. The curious appearance of the bird, with its colourful huge bill and its striking piebald plumage, has given rise to nicknames such as "clown of the ocean" and "sea parrot".
Description
The Atlantic Puffin is 28–34 cm (11-13.5 in) in length, with a 50–60 cm (20-24 in) wingspan. The male is generally slightly larger than the female, but they are coloured alike. This bird is mainly black above and white below, with gray to white cheeks and red-orange legs. The bill is large and triangular, and during the breeding season is bright orange with a patch of blue bordered by yellow at the rear. The characteristic bright orange bill plates grow before the breeding season and are shed after breeding. The bills are used in courtship rituals, such as the pair tapping their bills together. During flight, it appears to have grey round underwings and a white body; it has a direct flight low over the water. The related Horned Puffin (Fratercula corniculata) from the North Pacific looks very similar but has slightly different head ornaments.
The Atlantic Puffin is typically silent at sea, except for soft purring sounds it sometimes makes in flight. At the breeding colonies the birds make a deep growl.
Distribution and ecology
This species breeds on the coasts of northern Europe, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and eastern North America, from well within the Arctic Circle to northern France and Maine. The winter months are spent at sea far from land - in Europe as far south as the Mediterranean, and in North America to North Carolina.
About 95% of the Atlantic puffins in North America breed around Newfoundland's coastlines. The largest puffin colony in the western Atlantic (estimated at more than 260,000 pairs) can be found at the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, south of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Puffin viewing has also started to become popular in Elliston Newfoundland, previously named Bird Island Cove, located near Trinity. Here, puffins have been known to be tame enough to get even 2 or 3 feet away from them.
Predators
Predators of the Atlantic Puffin include the Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus), the Great Skua (Stercorarius skua), and similar-sized species, which can catch a puffin in flight, or pick off one separated from the colony. Smaller gull species like the Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) which are hardly able to bring down a healthy adult puffin, take eggs or recently hatched chicks, and will also steal fish.
Diet
Feeding areas are often located 100 km (60 mi) offshore from the nest or more, though when provisioning young the birds venture out only half that distance. Atlantic Puffins can dive for distances of up to 70 m (200 ft) and are propelled by their powerful wings, which are adapted for swimming. They use their webbed feet as a rudder while submerged. Puffins collect several small fish, such as herring, sprats, zooplankton, fish (shellfish), sand eels, when hunting. They use their tongues to hold the fish against spines in their palate, leaving their beaks free to open and catch more fish. Puffins normally line up the fish in their bills with the heads facing alternate ways. Additional components of their diet are crustaceans and mollusks. A puffin can sometimes have a dozen or more fish in its beak at once.
Reproduction
Puffins are colonial nesters, using burrows on grassy cliffs. They can face competition from other burrow nesting animals such as Rabbits, Manx Shearwaters and occasionally Razorbills. They will also nest amongst rocks and scree. Male puffins perform most of the work of clearing out the nest area, which is sometimes lined with grass, feathers or seaweed. The only time spent on land is to nest. Mates are found prior to arriving at the colonies, and mating takes place at sea.
Puffins make poor diet choices when the chips are down
by University of Southampton
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
A new study has shown that Britain's puffins may struggle to adapt to changes in their North Sea feeding grounds and researchers are calling for better use of marine protection areas (MPAs) to help protect the country's best known seabirds. Britain's coasts support globally important populations of many species of seabird, but they face many challenges as their established habitats change.
Scientists at the University of Southampton and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology studied the diet and distribution of Atlantic puffins and razorbills on the Isle of May National Nature Reserve, off the coast of southeast Scotland.
They studied the seabirds' over-winter feeding habits and found that during the 2014 to 2015 winter, when conditions were good, both species foraged close to their breeding colony eating a diet consisting mostly of lipid-rich fish such as sandeels. However in the 2007 to 2008 winter, conditions were not as good and the small fish populations were mainly concentrated further out in the southern North Sea. Whilst the razorbills flew farther away from the breeding colony in order to maintain their healthy diet, the puffins stayed closer in, eating a poorer quality diet of crustacea, polychaete worms and snake pipefish. The researchers found that fewer birds survived to return to the colony in the spring of 2008 compared to 2015, with puffins being more severely affected than razorbills.
To determine the birds' most likely foraging locations and position in the food chain, the team used tiny geolocation loggers attached to leg rings and a map developed by the University of Southampton based on the chemicals found in jellyfish in UK waters. These chemicals vary across marine space due to differences in the marine environment's chemistry, biology and physical processes and are transferred up the food chain to the seabirds. The researchers were therefore able measure the natural chemical signals within feather samples and match them to the jellyfish map.
Dr. Katie St John Glew, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southampton said: "We still know very little about where some of our commonest seabirds feed and what they eat outside the breeding season. To protect seabird populations within UK waters and across the globe, marine spatial plans need to consider not only where seabirds spend the summer but also where they are in the winter months. This information is critical for assessing vulnerabilities of seabird species to climatic and environmental change and for designing effective management strategies for these species.
"This combined technique allows us to better refine where different populations are feeding during vulnerable periods of the winter. By measuring the stable isotopes in a bird's feathers, we not only get information on where it was feeding, but also, what it ate."
More generally, the methods used in this research are not only useful for seabird conservation but can also be used to provide diet, movement and point of origin information on a whole host of marine animals.
"Numbers of many seabird species are already declining. Given the increasing threats from climate change and human activities such as fishing, microplastics and offshore windfarms, identifying ways to protect and conserve seabirds when they are at sea are urgently needed" said Prof Sarah Wanless from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are currently considered best practice in seabird conservation. However, current MPAs are mainly designed to safeguard important foraging areas during the breeding season when birds' feeding options are constrained by the need to return to the nest to incubate their eggs or feed their offspring. So far very few MPAs consider winter foraging locations and how these critical areas can change between years.
The study is published in the journal Movement Ecology.
phys.org/news/2019-11-puffins-poor-diet-choices-chips.html
Journal Reference:
Katie St. John Glew et al. Sympatric Atlantic puffins and razorbills show contrasting responses to adverse marine conditions during winter foraging within the North Sea, Movement Ecology (2019). DOI: 10.1186/s40462-019-0174-4
Abstract
Background
Natural environments are dynamic systems with conditions varying across years. Higher trophic level consumers may respond to changes in the distribution and quality of available prey by moving to locate new resources or by switching diets. In order to persist, sympatric species with similar ecological niches may show contrasting foraging responses to changes in environmental conditions. However, in marine environments this assertion remains largely untested for highly mobile predators outside the breeding season because of the challenges of quantifying foraging location and trophic position under contrasting conditions.
Method
Differences in overwinter survival rates of two populations of North Sea seabirds (Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) and razorbills (Alca torda)) indicated that environmental conditions differed between 2007/08 (low survival and thus poor conditions) and 2014/15 (higher survival, favourable conditions). We used a combination of bird-borne data loggers and stable isotope analyses to test 1) whether these sympatric species showed consistent responses with respect to foraging location and trophic position to these contrasting winter conditions during periods when body and cheek feathers were being grown (moult) and 2) whether any observed changes in moult locations and diet could be related to the abundance and distribution of potential prey species of differing energetic quality.
Results
Puffins and razorbills showed divergent foraging responses to contrasting winter conditions. Puffins foraging in the North Sea used broadly similar foraging locations during moult in both winters. However, puffin diet significantly differed, with a lower average trophic position in the winter characterised by lower survival rates. By contrast, razorbills’ trophic position increased in the poor survival winter and the population foraged in more distant southerly waters of the North Sea.
Conclusions
Populations of North Sea puffins and razorbills showed contrasting foraging responses when environmental conditions, as indicated by overwinter survival differed. Conservation of mobile predators, many of which are in sharp decline, may benefit from dynamic spatial based management approaches focusing on behavioural changes in response to changing environmental conditions, particularly during life history stages associated with increased mortality.
movementecologyjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40462-019-0174-4
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Subclass: Neornithes
Infraclass: Neognathae
Superorder: Neoaves
Order: Charadriiformes
Suborder: Lari
Family: Alcidae
Subfamily: Alcinae
Tribe: Fraterculini
Genus: Fratercula
Species: Fratercula arctica
The Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica) is a seabird species in the auk family. It is a pelagic bird that feeds primarily by diving for fish, but also eats other sea creatures, such as squid and crustaceans. Its most obvious characteristic is its brightly coloured beak during the breeding seasons. Also known as the Common Puffin, it is the only puffin species which is found in the Atlantic Ocean. The curious appearance of the bird, with its colourful huge bill and its striking piebald plumage, has given rise to nicknames such as "clown of the ocean" and "sea parrot".
Description
The Atlantic Puffin is 28–34 cm (11-13.5 in) in length, with a 50–60 cm (20-24 in) wingspan. The male is generally slightly larger than the female, but they are coloured alike. This bird is mainly black above and white below, with gray to white cheeks and red-orange legs. The bill is large and triangular, and during the breeding season is bright orange with a patch of blue bordered by yellow at the rear. The characteristic bright orange bill plates grow before the breeding season and are shed after breeding. The bills are used in courtship rituals, such as the pair tapping their bills together. During flight, it appears to have grey round underwings and a white body; it has a direct flight low over the water. The related Horned Puffin (Fratercula corniculata) from the North Pacific looks very similar but has slightly different head ornaments.
The Atlantic Puffin is typically silent at sea, except for soft purring sounds it sometimes makes in flight. At the breeding colonies the birds make a deep growl.
Distribution and ecology
This species breeds on the coasts of northern Europe, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and eastern North America, from well within the Arctic Circle to northern France and Maine. The winter months are spent at sea far from land - in Europe as far south as the Mediterranean, and in North America to North Carolina.
About 95% of the Atlantic puffins in North America breed around Newfoundland's coastlines. The largest puffin colony in the western Atlantic (estimated at more than 260,000 pairs) can be found at the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, south of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Puffin viewing has also started to become popular in Elliston Newfoundland, previously named Bird Island Cove, located near Trinity. Here, puffins have been known to be tame enough to get even 2 or 3 feet away from them.
Predators
Predators of the Atlantic Puffin include the Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus), the Great Skua (Stercorarius skua), and similar-sized species, which can catch a puffin in flight, or pick off one separated from the colony. Smaller gull species like the Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) which are hardly able to bring down a healthy adult puffin, take eggs or recently hatched chicks, and will also steal fish.
Diet
Feeding areas are often located 100 km (60 mi) offshore from the nest or more, though when provisioning young the birds venture out only half that distance. Atlantic Puffins can dive for distances of up to 70 m (200 ft) and are propelled by their powerful wings, which are adapted for swimming. They use their webbed feet as a rudder while submerged. Puffins collect several small fish, such as herring, sprats, zooplankton, fish (shellfish), sand eels, when hunting. They use their tongues to hold the fish against spines in their palate, leaving their beaks free to open and catch more fish. Puffins normally line up the fish in their bills with the heads facing alternate ways. Additional components of their diet are crustaceans and mollusks. A puffin can sometimes have a dozen or more fish in its beak at once.
Reproduction
Puffins are colonial nesters, using burrows on grassy cliffs. They can face competition from other burrow nesting animals such as Rabbits, Manx Shearwaters and occasionally Razorbills. They will also nest amongst rocks and scree. Male puffins perform most of the work of clearing out the nest area, which is sometimes lined with grass, feathers or seaweed. The only time spent on land is to nest. Mates are found prior to arriving at the colonies, and mating takes place at sea.
Puffins make poor diet choices when the chips are down
by University of Southampton
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
A new study has shown that Britain's puffins may struggle to adapt to changes in their North Sea feeding grounds and researchers are calling for better use of marine protection areas (MPAs) to help protect the country's best known seabirds. Britain's coasts support globally important populations of many species of seabird, but they face many challenges as their established habitats change.
Scientists at the University of Southampton and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology studied the diet and distribution of Atlantic puffins and razorbills on the Isle of May National Nature Reserve, off the coast of southeast Scotland.
They studied the seabirds' over-winter feeding habits and found that during the 2014 to 2015 winter, when conditions were good, both species foraged close to their breeding colony eating a diet consisting mostly of lipid-rich fish such as sandeels. However in the 2007 to 2008 winter, conditions were not as good and the small fish populations were mainly concentrated further out in the southern North Sea. Whilst the razorbills flew farther away from the breeding colony in order to maintain their healthy diet, the puffins stayed closer in, eating a poorer quality diet of crustacea, polychaete worms and snake pipefish. The researchers found that fewer birds survived to return to the colony in the spring of 2008 compared to 2015, with puffins being more severely affected than razorbills.
To determine the birds' most likely foraging locations and position in the food chain, the team used tiny geolocation loggers attached to leg rings and a map developed by the University of Southampton based on the chemicals found in jellyfish in UK waters. These chemicals vary across marine space due to differences in the marine environment's chemistry, biology and physical processes and are transferred up the food chain to the seabirds. The researchers were therefore able measure the natural chemical signals within feather samples and match them to the jellyfish map.
Dr. Katie St John Glew, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southampton said: "We still know very little about where some of our commonest seabirds feed and what they eat outside the breeding season. To protect seabird populations within UK waters and across the globe, marine spatial plans need to consider not only where seabirds spend the summer but also where they are in the winter months. This information is critical for assessing vulnerabilities of seabird species to climatic and environmental change and for designing effective management strategies for these species.
"This combined technique allows us to better refine where different populations are feeding during vulnerable periods of the winter. By measuring the stable isotopes in a bird's feathers, we not only get information on where it was feeding, but also, what it ate."
More generally, the methods used in this research are not only useful for seabird conservation but can also be used to provide diet, movement and point of origin information on a whole host of marine animals.
"Numbers of many seabird species are already declining. Given the increasing threats from climate change and human activities such as fishing, microplastics and offshore windfarms, identifying ways to protect and conserve seabirds when they are at sea are urgently needed" said Prof Sarah Wanless from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are currently considered best practice in seabird conservation. However, current MPAs are mainly designed to safeguard important foraging areas during the breeding season when birds' feeding options are constrained by the need to return to the nest to incubate their eggs or feed their offspring. So far very few MPAs consider winter foraging locations and how these critical areas can change between years.
The study is published in the journal Movement Ecology.
phys.org/news/2019-11-puffins-poor-diet-choices-chips.html
Journal Reference:
Katie St. John Glew et al. Sympatric Atlantic puffins and razorbills show contrasting responses to adverse marine conditions during winter foraging within the North Sea, Movement Ecology (2019). DOI: 10.1186/s40462-019-0174-4
Abstract
Background
Natural environments are dynamic systems with conditions varying across years. Higher trophic level consumers may respond to changes in the distribution and quality of available prey by moving to locate new resources or by switching diets. In order to persist, sympatric species with similar ecological niches may show contrasting foraging responses to changes in environmental conditions. However, in marine environments this assertion remains largely untested for highly mobile predators outside the breeding season because of the challenges of quantifying foraging location and trophic position under contrasting conditions.
Method
Differences in overwinter survival rates of two populations of North Sea seabirds (Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) and razorbills (Alca torda)) indicated that environmental conditions differed between 2007/08 (low survival and thus poor conditions) and 2014/15 (higher survival, favourable conditions). We used a combination of bird-borne data loggers and stable isotope analyses to test 1) whether these sympatric species showed consistent responses with respect to foraging location and trophic position to these contrasting winter conditions during periods when body and cheek feathers were being grown (moult) and 2) whether any observed changes in moult locations and diet could be related to the abundance and distribution of potential prey species of differing energetic quality.
Results
Puffins and razorbills showed divergent foraging responses to contrasting winter conditions. Puffins foraging in the North Sea used broadly similar foraging locations during moult in both winters. However, puffin diet significantly differed, with a lower average trophic position in the winter characterised by lower survival rates. By contrast, razorbills’ trophic position increased in the poor survival winter and the population foraged in more distant southerly waters of the North Sea.
Conclusions
Populations of North Sea puffins and razorbills showed contrasting foraging responses when environmental conditions, as indicated by overwinter survival differed. Conservation of mobile predators, many of which are in sharp decline, may benefit from dynamic spatial based management approaches focusing on behavioural changes in response to changing environmental conditions, particularly during life history stages associated with increased mortality.
movementecologyjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40462-019-0174-4
