Unexpected puffin stuff

Who doesn't love an Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica)? Their comical antics; their ability to get those plump little bodies into the air on such tiny wings; that colorful bill with all those fish hanging out the sides! What's not to like? But they are also full of surprises. Did you know, for instance, that great chunks of that rainbow bill fall off every year? Or that these birds use tools? Together, such snippets represent some of our earliest and most recently learned puffin particulars. First, those discardable bill parts. “It is interesting to know that after breeding is over, the gaudy sheath of the bill is shed and until it grows again the following spring, the puffin's beak is reduced to no more than half its summer size. These discarded beaks were prized by the [Native Americans] for making necklaces”, wrote the Reverend Donald John Gillies in his memoir, The Truth about St Kilda: an Islander's Memoir (2010; Edinburgh, UK: Birlinn Ltd). I was actually looking for information on puffins as food for the people of the North Atlantic when I came across these lines, but I had to agree: it was interesting to know! Gillies (1901–1994), who only put pen to paper late in life, had been born and bred on the now-deserted island of St Kilda, a wild place over 40 miles west of Scotland's Outer Hebrides islands, and I knew he'd seen a puffin or two because he also recorded them as being delicious when barbecued! I had no idea that bill-shedding was a thing – but I remained a little confused by his description. The whole of a puffin's summer beak is “gaudy”, from reddish-orange in the anterior or outer half, to a black portion with yellow trimming in the posterior or inner half (Figure 1). So, did Gillies’ “sheath” cover the entire bill? Some searching (yes, by now I'd forgotten all about puffins as food) revealed that it is only the inner region that drops off (from the upper and lower bill), with the then-exposed underlying layer being dark and drab. Imagine my surprise, however, when I discovered that this had been known since at least 1877, when French physician and zoologist Louis Bureau described in minute detail exactly what parts are cast away (Bull Soc Zool Fr 1877; 8: 1–21). And puffin expert Annette Fayet of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (Trondheim) confirmed it for me: “Atlantic puffins shed part of the beak in winter, including the cere, [the yellow rim between the upper bill and the facial plumage], the inner bill [the horny dark plates closest to the cere], and the lamella [the paler part of the beak between the dark plates and the orange outer beak]. They also lose the corresponding inner lower bill and eye ornaments, and the rosette at the corner of their mouth loses its bright orange color.” Let me see. No, not falling off yet… B Burton I was delighted to see, however, that puffins can even surprise Annette. “I didn't know their bills were used for ornamentation!”, she exclaimed. It turns out Gillies was right (if, again, a little confusingly so) about that too. It is hard to know to which Native Americans he was referring, for he lived on both coasts of Canada after abandoning St Kilda, eventually settling near Vancouver. And perhaps he did not realize that the Atlantic puffin of which he spoke is absent from Canada's Pacific shores. But there are puffin species there too, which Bureau later confirmed shed their bill parts in a similar manner. And I soon found these castings to be collected by the “Indigenous people of Alaska” for fashioning shamans’ rattles, and more specifically by the Aleut, Inuit, and Kwakiutl people who used them (or the entire bill of captured or dead birds) to decorate their clothing (see eg https://bit.ly/3SmsQKP). But perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that some Atlantic puffins pick up little sticks with those gaudy bills, and use them to have a good scratch! A recent paper reports two cases of this behavior: one on the island of Skomer off the coast of Wales, and another on the Icelandic isle of Grímsey (P Natl Acad Sci USA 2019; 117: 1277–79). It came as no surprise to see that Annette was the first author of that paper – but body-care-related tool-use by a seabird is a jaw-dropper by any standards! Sure, some primates and elephants may relieve an itch with a twig, but who would put their money on a puffin doing the same! Why it took nearly 150 years of puffin watching since Bureau made his bill-shedding observations for this tool-use to be recorded, I cannot say. Perhaps puffins have taken it upon themselves to surprise us with their secrets only very occasionally. Perhaps they are just too busy collecting fish to even be bothered, or perhaps they just don't get an itch all that often. But hey, maybe by 2170 we'll know. Adrian Burton

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