Atlantic Puffins

A puffin’s beak (or bill) changes colour during the year.

Puffins only possess Technicolor beaks – and their matching orange feet – during the spring breeding season. Just before winter sets in, they shed the colourful outer beak, leaving a noticeably smaller and duller-coloured beak.

Puffins mate for life.

They seem to have very conservative family values and usually pair up with the same partner as previous years – some have been together 20 years! They raise their single chick (or puffling) over the course of summer and return every year to the same burrow with the same mate.