Animals & Birds through the Alphabet - Atlantic Puffin

Welcome to our series Animals & Birds Through the Alphabet. Our first topic is the Atlantic Puffin. We have information, cool facts, free worksheets and coloring pages. This is a great resource for a science fair project.

If you haven't started an animal notebook we recommend you to now. They are so much fun. Simply click on the group & order links to open up a notebook page you can print and use.

Group: Birds

Name: Atlantic Puffin

Order: Charadriiformes

Family: Alcidae

Genus & Species: Fratercula artica

Description: The puffin has a brightly colored beak during the breeding season. When that is over, in the winter months, the puffin’s bill becomes smaller and gray. The puffin is black and white.

Males weigh about 12 – 17 ounces and females 11 – 12 ounces. Their wingspan is 6 – 7 inches.

Habitat: Atlantic puffins live in the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. During the spring they go ashore. They like rocky cliffs. Puffins like to dig burrows in steep, grassy slopes although they will also burrow under rocks.

Diet: Puffins love sand eels. They will also eat whitebait or larval fish of different species.

Breeding: They return each year to their breeding cliffs between March and April. The female lays 1 egg which hatches in about 39 days. Their nest chambers can be found at the end of 6 foot long tunnels that both the male and female dig.

Cool Facts:

• Puffins are also known as Sea Parrots.
• It can swim & fly very fast but often crashes when it lands.
• The Atlantic Puffin can be heard making soft purring noise.
• Both parents feed the fledgling puffins.
• Puffins are members of the Auk family.

Things to do:

Add the puffin to your animal notebook. Print out our Atlantic Puffin worksheet to use.

1. Mark on a map where the puffin lives.
   
2. Do the puffin crossword puzzle.
   
3. Color a picture of a puffin. Print our free coloring page.
   
4. Do the puffin word search.
   
5. Complete the puffin alphabet fun.
   
6. Read a book about puffins.
   
   We recommend:
   Puffin A Journey Home
   Puffin: Bird of the Open Sea
   Welcome Back, Puffin! (Hoppers Level 1)
   
   
7. Make a poster telling about Atlantic puffins.
   
8. Draw a picture of some puffins diving for food.
   
9. Look up sand eels.
   
10. Do the puffin decode puzzle.

~Belinda Mooney