Seeing puffins was the high spot of the trip for us.
Atlantic Puffins stand about a foot high. They are
pelagic, meaning they spend their lives at sea,
coming ashore only to reproduce. They then
make their nests on rocky cliffs and islets that
are relatively free of predatory animals. Nests
are in natural caves or burrows, beyond passages
so narrow as to be inaccessible to larger
predatory birds. As the pictures show, they are
very sociable with their own species.
We saw puffins on two boat rides, first from the
Nova Scotia coast (the two pictures below) and
next from Fogo Island, on central part of northern
coast of Newfoundland. All remaining puffin
pictures were from the latter trip.
