SPINNING AROUND

Watch puffins form swirling roundabouts in the sky as they prepare to come ashore

FOR SEVEN MONTHS OF THE YEAR, Britain's most charismatic auk all but disappears off the face of the Earth. Adopting drab plumage, and with a suitably sombre bill to match, Atlantic puffins ride out the storms of autumn and winter far from land, either in solitary fashion or in small groups. However, as the spring days lengthen and the temperatures rise, the year's first flush of 'puffin food' out at sea not only permits a return to technicolour but also the flicking of a behavioural switch, which transforms them from often solitary seafarers to much more sociable land-lovers.

With their multicoloured bill plates regrown and with fresh feathers, the now dapper puffins abandon their wintry sea stations in favour of the inshore waters adjacent to where they hope to breed. At major nesting sites, called puffinries, the number of puffins collecting in large rafts on the sea in late March or early April can often reach tens of thousands. Initially reluctant to exchange sea for land, days can sometimes pass before even a single puffin will attempt to set foot on terra firma.