What Do Puffins Eat? - Kylon Powell
Ethan Hayes 
Eating Habits of Puffins
Atlantic puffins have a penguin-like appearance, but they have a bright beak that has earned them the nickname “sea parrot” by some. Like other birds, they fly through the air, but they also “fly” across the water using their wings as paddles.
Puffins are technically an omnivore, but their diet is entirely carnivorous, consisting primarily of tiny fish and supplemented with zooplankton during the colder winter months. Capelin, sand eel, salmon, and squid are some of the prey species. In this article, we will discuss what puffins usually eat.
Fish
Puffins consume tiny fish ranging from 2 to 6 inches in lengths, such as sand lance, sprat, capelin, herring, hake, and cod. They graze in shallow waters near the breeding colony during the mating season, seldom venturing more than 10 miles from shore. Puffins frequently catch many fish in a single dive, holding them crosswise in their beak. Backward-pointing spines on the roof of their mouth and tongue help keep the fish in place.
Although adult birds hunt on tiny fish and zooplankton, they feed their young fish. Instead of regurgitating food for their young, they may carry well over a dozen fish in their beaks every trip
Other Seafood
Although fish is the primary food puffins eat, puffins also eat meat, squids, turtles. haddock, rats, penguins, octopuses, crabs, jellyfish, and zooplankton. Puffins also like eating crustaceans in the absence of fish. Puffins eat crustaceans that may include euphausiid shrimp, mysids, copepods, as well as mollusks, and marine worms.
What Puffins Do Not Eat
Puffins are omnivores, but they mostly eat seafood, mainly fish. Puffins do not eat rodents such as rats, mice, or rabbits. Puffins are also not considered a threat to humans since they do not eat meat or blood. Puffins also do not eat green vegetables or fruits. Due to their habitat, their diet rarely constitutes leaves or grasses.
