From: (joolz)
Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.animals
Subject: Re: Misc Animals Index 2 - BitW_-_Puffin_jt.jpg
Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1999 12:49:01 GMT

BitW_-_Puffin_jt

Puffins

These birds spend most of their year out at sea, but March finds them gathering
in great rafts off shore. Here, already sporting brightly coloured breeding
bills, they pair prior to coming ashore and digging the egg-laying chamber (they
may use a rabbit burrow). The single egg is laid in April and after forty-three
days' incubation and fifty days in the nest the birds head out to sea. Lundy
Island is the last stronghold for auks in the Bristol Channel, though even here
numbers are in decline. Even the massive colony on Skokholm Island (20,000 in
1931) has shown drastic reductions. The reasons for these declines are not
known, but oil spills and diminishing food supplies must have had some effect.

From 'Britain in the Wild' by Jim Hallet