It is easily identified in the breeding season by the colorful laterally compressed bill, a distinct white face with long cream colored facial plumes, black body, and red feet. We use this colony occupancy data to model the relationship between nesting habitat and current environmental conditions to project future suitable breeding sites in the same geographic range. Amazing Adaptations. Although it flies strongly, it must work hard to take off from the water, thrashing along the surface before becoming airborne. Tufted Puffins. Middleton Island’s Tufted Puffin population attracted PWSSC researchers after a new study suggested the previously robust Gulf of Alaska populations may be in decline. The Tufted Puffin is a seabird of the open waters, islands, and coastal cliffs of the north Pacific. Tufted Puffin in California is restricted mostly to general accounts of habitat use. Puffins breed on offshore rocks and islands or, rarely, steep mainland cliffs that are largely free of mamma- lian predators and human disturbance. The Farallon Islands lies at the southern extreme of the Tufted Puffin breeding range. It is larger than other puffin species and distinctive in appearance, with a bold white "face-mask" and golden head plumes in the breeding season. Tufted Puffin (Fratercula cirrhata)El “Puffin”Copetudo - en Español Species Code: FRCI Description: The Tufted Puffin is a medium-sized, stocky, dark seabird with a rounded head. Breeding extends from mid-April to early September in Washington, and nesting occurs in burrows where a single egg is laid. In addition, nesting Tufted Puffins are highly vulnerable to red and arctic foxes, river otters, brown bears, and other mammals. Nesting around the edges of the North Atlantic, this puffin is sought after by birdwatchers who visit Maine or eastern Canada in summer. They prefer such places as the seaward faces of sandy bluffs above beaches, steep grassy slopes, or sometimes in crevices and cracks on cliffs. Nesting Tufted Puffins are vulnerable to introduced predators such as rats and foxes.

The Tufted puffin is the most recognized seabird in Oregon. The breeding adult is all black except for a white face and long golden plumes curling over back of head and neck. It is common to abundant at breeding rocks but rare to uncommon elsewhere owing to its pelagic feeding habits. It is estimated that there are approximately 60 to 100 breeding individuals on the refuge. Another adaptation, heavy bones, allows the Tufted Puffin to dive up to 200 feet in pursuit of prey, mostly fish and squid; the birds can stay underwater for more than a minute. Here we use 50 years of nesting-habitat distribution information—ranging from the Bering Sea to California—to map Tufted Puffin nesting habitat. Tufted Puffins spend most of their lives in the open ocean, but during the breeding season mature birds are found on islands and coastal areas in places that have areas suitable for nesting. It is difficult to access the population because of the inaccessibility of their nesting crevices.

Such predators were once absent from most offshore islands in the northeast Pacific, and the puffins have no defense against them.

Tufted puffins gather in colonies on islands and headlands during spring and summer to breed and rear young. At its colonies, the bird may fly back to its nest carrying a dozen small fish lined up in its bill, making us wonder how the puffin holds onto ten slippery fish while grabbing two more. Along the Pacific coast of North America, nesting Tufted Puffins were traditionally preyed upon by indigenous humans for their meat and eggs. Tufted Puffin is a medium-sized, stocky, dark-shaded bird with a rounded head.

Tufted Puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) populations have experienced dramatic declines since the mid-19th century along the southern portion of the species range, leading citizen groups to petition the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to list the species as endangered in the contiguous US. Ensemble model results indicate warming marine and terrestrial temperatures play a key role in the loss of suitable Tufted Puffin nesting conditions in the California Current under both business-as-usual (RCP 8.5) and moderated (RCP 4.5) carbon emission scenarios, and in particular, that mean summer sea-surface temperatures greater than 15 °C are likely to make habitat unsuitable for breeding. Large, parrot-shaped red bill, compressed at the end, a basal third of yellow to the greenish maxilla. Many California populations, however, have disappeared or significantly declined. The Tufted Puffin (Lunda cirrhata) apparently has the most extensive breeding distribution of any North Pacific seabird, extending in the western North Pacific from Hokkaido to the north Chukotsk Peninsula on the Chukchi Sea, and in North America from Cape Lisburne on the Chukchi Sea, south to the Farallon Islands off central California (Udvardy 1963). nesting habitat will be lost along the southern portion of current Tufted Puffin range as well as the opportunity for northward range expansion. Tufted Puffin colonies fluctuate in size annually, based in part upon food supply and climatic events, such as El Niño. With “denticles” on the roof of their mouths and a locking tongue, the birds are able grab and hold 5 to 20 small fish crosswise for delivery to chicks at the nest. Incubation is performed by both members of the breeding pair and usually lasts between 43 and 46 days.