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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PRE-PYR |
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PUFFIN , the common English name of a sea-bird, the Fratercula arctica of most ornithologists, known however on various parts of the British coasts as the bottlenose, coulterneb, pope, sea-parrot and tammy-norie, to say nothing of other still more local designations, some (as marrott and willock) shared also with allied species of Alcidae, to which family it belongs. Of old time puffins were a valuable commodity to the owners of their breeding-places, for the young
Cornwall
sixth
' There cannot be much doubt that the name puffin given to these young
spring with remarkable punctuality on a certain day, which naturally varies with the locality, and after passing the summer there leaving their homes with similar precision. They differ from most other Alcidae in laying their single egg (which is white with a few grey markings when first produced, but speedily begrimed by the soil) in a shallow burrow, which they either dig for themselves or appropriate from a rabbit, for on most of their haunts rabbits have been introduced. Their plumage is of a glossy black abovethe cheeks grey, encircled by a black bandand pure white beneath; their feet are of a bright reddish orange, but the most remark-able feature of these birds, and one that gives them a very comical expression, is their huge bill. This is very deep and laterally flattened, so as indeed to resemble a coulter, as one of the bird's common names expresses; but moreover it is parti-coloured blue, yellow and redcuriously grooved and still more curiously embossed in places, that is to say during the breeding-season, when the birds are most frequently seen. But it had long been known to some observers that such puffins as occasionally occur in winter (most often washed up on the shore and dead) presented a beak very different in shape and size, and to account for the difference was a standing
change their bills annually. The remark seems to have been generally overlooked; but it has proved to be very near the truth, for after investigations carefully pursued during some years by Dr Bureau of Nantes he was in 1877 enabled to show (Bull . Soc. Zool. France, ii. 377399)2 that the puffin's bill undergoes what may be called an annual moult, some of its most remarkable appendages, as well as certain horny out-growths above and beneath the eyes, dropping off at the end of the breeding season, and being reproduced the following year. Not long after the same naturalist announced (op. cit.) iv. 168) that he had followed the similar changes which. he found to take place, not only in other species of puffins, as the Fratercula corniculata and F. cirrhata of the Northern Pacific, but in several birds of the kindred genera Ceratorhina and Simorhynachus inhabiting the same waters. The name puffin has also been given in books to one of the shearwaters which belong to the sub-family Procellariina of the Petrels (q.v.), and its latinized form Puffinus is still used in that sense in scientific nomenclature. This fact seems to have arisen from a mistake of Ray's who, seeing in Tradescant's Museum and that of the Royal Society some young shearwaters from the Isle of Man, prepared in like manner to young puffins, thought they were the birds mentioned by Gesner as the remarks inserted in Willughby
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