How To See An Atlantic Puffin

These instantly recognisable birds are a delight to watch as they return to their nesting sites.

Encountering these handsome little seabirds on a spring clifftop walk is something everyone should experience atleast once. Luckily for us, the British Isles and Ireland are among the best places in the world for puffins, which flock here in their hundreds of thousands from March to August to mate and raise their young – though numbers, sadly, are now in decline.

While puffins are loved for their expressive, clown-like breeding finery and whirry-winged, almost clockwork-like flight, there’s more to these hardy little auks than pretty faces. Just six weeks after hatching, fledglings take to the waves, battling Atlantic hell and high water for up to three years before returning to land for their first breeding season. They are skilled diggers – using claws on their webbed feet and sharp beaks to excavate nesting tunnels in the soil – and are formidable hunters, flying in and out of the water to snatch their sandeel prey.