Tufted Puffin in Detail.

Tufted Puffins are stout medium sized birds. Many people visiting Alaska who don't know better think they are penguins. Tufted puffins are in the family of auks. Breeding Adults: easily spotted with their white faces and yellow tufts. The tufts resemble long thick blonde eye brows that sweep behind the eyes and down the neck. They have massive orange and yellow bills. Winter Adults: tufts molt off or greatly diminish and faces turn dark. The yellow ridge between the tip of the bill and front of face shrinks and darkens. Juvenile: solid dusky yellow bills much thinner than adults. The bellies of juvenile tufted puffins can be anywhere between white to grey in color.

Tufted puffin chicks will remain in their nest/den until they are grown and ready to fly, as such they are seldom spotted by chance.

Tufted puffins wings serve better for swimming rather than swimming.

Starting around may puffins return from their winters out at sea. Good places to find tufted puffin colonies are along rocky cliffs generally near open waters. The rookeries will be in similar locations where soil is available to burrow. Burrows are usually 3 to 4 feet deep. In rockier places they may nest. A puffin only lays one egg per year. The male and female take turns incubating the egg for six to seven weeks. Chicks are born in July to early August. In winter puffins move to the Northern Pacific, puffins will raft together, rafts can reach numbers into the thousands. Young will spend their first summer at sea, not returning to land until their second summer.

While swimming puffins will try to keep distance between them and people before diving under or flying away. A slow calm approach is best when wanting to get close to puffins. Rafts of puffins can sometimes be found miles out from shore in early and late summer.

Tufted puffins feed mostly on zooplankton and fish such as including herring, capelin, and sand lance.