The Horned Puffin is a beautiful bird in the auk family. This seabird breeds on rocky island cliffs off of Siberia, Alaska, and British Columbia. Horned Puffins winter on the open ocean.
The Horned Puffin has a striking look, with white underparts and black upperparts. The face is white and the large beak is most colorful during breeding season, ranging from bright yellow to dark orange. Adult Horned Puffins have a small fleshy protuberance above the eye, giving them their common name.
Breeding Horned Puffins are known for carrying large amounts of small fish back to feed their chicks, who eat the fish whole. Adult Horned Puffins have a more varied diet of seafood, including squid and other invertebrates.
Conservation
The Horned Puffin is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List and was last assessed in 2012 by BirdLife International. This species has a very large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). Despite the fact that the population trend appears to be decreasing, the decline is not believed to be sufficiently rapid to approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size is extremely large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.
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