Baby Atlantic puffins in Iceland look for moonlight as they emerge from the cliffside burrows where they hatched. It leads them to the sea. However, nearby streetlights can confuse them, causing many to make the wrong turn on the way to the sea.
The community-based Puffling Patrol searches for and rescues lost Pufflings in the city.
These chicks, along with many of the colony’s adults, assist scientists in monitoring and studying the mostly mysterious lives of birds at sea.
Earth: Andrew Oakley/via Wikimedia Commons and NASA (public domain);Iceland: Kirill Schreiber. Adapted by J. Crumlin. Adapted by L. Steenblick vanThe Atlantic puffin’s range extends across the North Atlantic, from the coast of Canada and the northeastern United States to Greenland and Russia, with these birds spending most of their lives at sea.
Iceland boasts the world’s largest Atlantic puffin rookery, situated on the small rocky island of Heimaey, where adult puffins spend the summer in pairs, raising a single chick after laying and incubating eggs.
Nesting pairs of puffins prefer grassy seaside slopes on rocky cliffs, such as those above a harbor in Heimaey, each occupying its burrow, resembling a massive apartment complex on a cliff top.
Source: www.snexplores.org
