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Wonders of God’s Creation
More Than Just a Pretty Beak How many fish can you hold in your mouth at one time? It’s probably best if you don’t know—but puffins can hold quite a few. God gave them uniquely hinged jaws and specialized, sandpapery tongues to squash fish against a spiky patch inside their mouths. Most puffins can hold 10 small fish in their beaks at a time, but one puffin in Britain managed to cram in 62. Speaking of beaks, they’re not always the clownish-looking orange you see in pictures (a group of puffins is sometimes called a circus). Before winter, puffins shed the outer layer of their beaks, revealing a duller gray underneath. They turn orange again around mating season. In 2018 British researchers found that puffin beaks glow under UV light, but they don’t know why. Puffins also use their beaks to dig burrows more than 3 feet deep, with a nest at the far end and a toilet at the first bend in the tunnel to keep the nest clean. Parents take turns sitting on their single egg until it hatches. To feed the new puffling, parents can make a hundred trips a day to bring back mouthfuls of fish. Puffins are fast, traveling 50 miles per hour through the air, and are amazingly adept under water, diving nearly 200 feet as they hunt for fish.
Pictured: tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata) Photo by James Capo Text by James Capo and Jeremy Lallier
