Horned Puffin

The horned puffin is the best-known auk of the Pacific Ocean. About 1.2 million Horned Puffins breed in the North Pacific, almost exclusively in Siberia and Alaska. Unlike Tufted Puffins, Horned Puffins find cozy crevices in rocky cliffs to lay their eggs and raise their chicks. Horned Puffins lay only one plain white egg. Like all others members of the Alcidae family, both parents incubate the egg and raise the growing chick. Each parent shares mealtime duties by carrying up to 15 fish at once back to the chick. Both the adult and chicks like feast on small fish, squid, and sometimes krill. It can take Horned Puffin chicks as long as fifty days in the nest to grow big enough to go to sea.