There is also an area in the burr ow for wastes called a guano pit. Puffins only lay one egg each year. Both male and female help to incubate the egg. After 39-43 days, a fluffy chick, or puffling, covered with gray down will hatch. The parents bring small fish to the burrow entrance 4-10 times a day for the chick to eat.
Puffins eat capelin and herring in the wild, in addition to several other types of small fish.
Their diet may also include krill, a small animal that looks like shrimp. Adult puffins are able to carry several fish in their beaks at one time. The upp er portion of the beak has stiff bristles which hold the fish in place. Sometimes the fish are arranged in the beak so that the head of one fish is beside the tail of another. The average number carried is five, but some birds have been found with as many as twenty tiny fish pressed in their beaks.