In order to get airborne, the puffin must run on the surface of the water for a long distance. The puffin can fly, but it is a better swimmer. It uses its wings to propel itself in the water and its legs to maneuver.
The horned puffin's legs are set well back on its body, and it is not very graceful on land, but it is a very good swimmer. Puffins breed in large colonies with the tufted puffin. The chick then goes out to the open ocean waters and remains there for at least two years. When the chick fledges in 40 days, the parents leave the chick and return to the open ocean. The egg hatches in about 40 days and both parents feed and protect the chick. They place the egg under a wing and then lean their body against the egg. The female lays only one egg a year.īoth parents incubate the egg. A pair usually builds a nest in a crevice in a cliff or in a hole between boulders. In the summer, puffins come in from the open ocean to mate. Horned Puffins are very similar to the Atlantic Puffin of the Atlantic Coast, but are found along the Pacific Coast, primarily around Alaska and the west. The horned puffin can carry more than one fish in its mouth at a time. It can dive up to depths of 80 feet to catch its prey. The horned puffin uses its large bill to catch fish and marine invertebrates. In breeding season, it is found on sea cliffs or on rocky islets. The ‘horned’ part of their common name is derived from the small, dark, fleshy, horn-like projection above the eye that is present in breeding season. Occasionally, stragglers make their way down as far south as southern California. Horned Puffins are migratory seabirds of open ocean waters in the winter and coastal islands and rocky cliffs in the summer breeding season. It winters in the ocean off the coast from Alaska to Washington.
The horned puffin breeds from northern Alaska to British Columbia in Canada. The light coloring on the underside of the puffin helps them to blend into the sunlit water above and makes locating the puffin more difficult for predators swimming under them. The puffin's dark coloring on the top makes it hard for predators above them in the water to see them, because the puffin blends into the dark water. Animals with countershading have different colors on their backs and stomachs. Horned puffins exhibit a type of deceptive coloration called counter shading. Because of its colorful bill, the horned puffin is sometimes called the sea parrot. Males and females look similar, but the male's bill is bigger and brighter than the female's bill and the male is a little larger. In the winter, the horned puffin's bill is smaller, its feathers are grayer, and its face is darker. It has bright orange legs and webbed feet with claws on the ends of them. It has a large, triangular orange bill with a red tip. The prior rating for the Horned Puffin was Lower Risk, which was downgraded to Least Concern in 2004. The range of the Horned Puffin is estimated to be as much as 1 million square kilometers while the population of this bird species is around 800,000 individuals. The bright orange tip of the beak is much smaller than the other two species and is flecked with grey streaks. The beak of the horned puffin curves further away from the face and has a hump on the top ridge of the beak. It has a white face and cheeks with a small black "horn" above its eyes and a thin, dark line that runs from its eyes to the nape of its neck. The Horned Puffin is native to Japan, Canada, Russia and the United States. Description - Horned Puffin: Don Henise, flickr creative commons, CC BY 2.0. The horned puffin is a small, pigeon-sized bird with black uppersides and a white chest and undersides. The mortality pattern and histopathologic lesions observed in this case support the use of selective age capture and vitamin supplementation for wild alcid chick collection.ICUN Redlist - World Status: Least Concern Microscopic examination of tissues from five of the six birds showed myocardial necrosis and degeneration suggestive of vitamin E deficiency and intestinal protozoa resembling Microsporidia. Clinical signs were nonspecific, and gross necropsies, insecticide toxicology screens, and bacterial cultures were unremarkable.
The birds that died were collected at a young age, weighed 45.4-65.7 g, and had been fed a diet of thawed frozen ocean silversides (Atherinidae) that was not supplemented with vitamins. Six of the 16 puffin chicks died within a 5-day period beginning 2 days after their arrival into quarantine at the zoo. Sixteen horned puffin (Fratercula corniculata) and six parakeet auklet (Cyclorrhynchus psittacula) chicks of various prefledging ages were caught in Alaska and transported to the North Carolina Zoological Park (USA) in August 1995.
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