### animal | vertebrate | bird | seabird:

Puffin
* Most puffins dive into water.
* Most puffins eat fish
* Most puffins have bills
  - cheek
  - low breed success
* Some puffins fly to different countries along the Atlantic shores.
* Some puffins have direct flight
  - help ecosystems
  - make nests
* Some puffins return to breed colonies
* abound on offshore islands.
* are able to travel by several means.
* are also expert swimmers and divers
  - indicators of a healthy ocean, and show humans when over-fishing is occuring
  - carnivores and live off small fish such as herring, hake and sand eels
  - colonial nesters that lay one egg each year
  - excellent swimmers and divers
  - extremely common up north in Canada and Greenland
  - handsome sea birds with multi-colored beaks and orange feet
  - highly social
  - important diving birds in the North Pacific
  - large auks with broad, colorful bills and whimsical expressions
  - members of the seabird family called alcids
  - nicknamed parrots of the sea, because of their colorful triangular shaped beaks
* are sea birds that can fly, swim, and dig burrows
  - inhabit the rugged coasts of Norway
  - seabirds
  - similar in size and coloring to their Horned Puffin cousins
  - small sea-birds
  - some of the most amazing creatures on Earth
  - still abundant there
  - strong fliers averaging speeds of fifty miles per hour
  - the ones to be found at the upper strata of society
  - well-suited for swimming underwater, rather than for flying
* beat wings.
* belong to the family of seabirds known as alcids or auks.
* breed in colonies, some with only a few nests and some very large
  - holes they dig into the ground and build their nests
  - when they become five years old
* can also help tourism
  - carry several fish back to their nest at a time
  - fly and dive in the ocean
  - serve as food for people
* carry their food in their large orange and black beaks.
* come to Iceland in the summer to pair up and mate
  - visit the nearby islands in the summer months
* communicate more with gestures than with sounds.
* dig a deep burrow in which the female lays a single egg
  - eight feet under ground and then they lay their egg
  - their burrows using their bills and feet
* eat capelin and herring in the wild, in addition to several other types of small fish
* eat small fish, small crustaceans, and mollusks
* favor the cold herring-rich waters of the North Atlantic.
* feed in flocks, with fish and zooplankton the mainstay of their diet.
* fly over thousands of miles per year
  - quickly
* gather on the lower fairways after a rain, searching for worms.
* get from one place to another in several ways.
* have a direct flight, low over the water
  - triangular, colorful bill that is blunt and comes to a curved point
  - very unusual call
  - bright orange legs and webbed feet
  - dark orange feet, that are webbed in a palmate formation
  - long journeys to sea
  - no hind toe
  - two sets of eyelids, inner and outer
* hold the fish in their bills until they return to the nest to feed the puffin chicks.
* includes air sacs
  - bird's feet
  - brains
  - breasts
  - cell membranes
  - cells
  - chest cavities
  - chests
  - corpi
  - cytoplasm
  - faces
  - flight feathers
  - heads
  - lips
  - mouths
  - nuclei
  - plasma membranes
  - quill feathers
  - rib cages
  - second joints
  - sections
  - skulls
  - sterna
  - talons
  - vacuoles
  - wishbones
* indicate the abundance of fish by the numbers of fish they bring ashore for their chicks.
* keep the same mate each year as well as the same burrow.
* live in colonies
  - puffin colonies
* make loud growling calls usually from underground which sounds like a muffled chainsaw
  - their homes in crevices between rocks or use their webbed feet to dig burrows
* mostly eat small, shoaling fish.
* normally line up the fish in their bills with the heads facing alternate ways.
* often mate for life.
* return to the same burrow each year.
* spend the majority of their lives on the water.
* tend to have a monogamous mating system.
* typically hunt small fish like herring or sand eels.
* use body movements to communicate in a variety of situations
  - several Maine islands for summer nesting sites
* usually keep the same mates for life.
* usually return to the same burrow and nest with the same mate year after year
  - every year with the same mate