How to Save a Baby Puffin

On a cold and drizzly night in August 2019, Addison Browne, then 12, found herself in a parking lot in Witless Bay, a town in Newfoundland, Canada. She pointed her flashlight under a parked car, and there it was: a baby puffin, small and frightened and alone.

Addison pulled the bird out from under the car and placed it gently in a crate. She breathed a sigh of relief. The puffin chick, called a puffling, was now safe.

In the North Atlantic, pufflings are in peril. Because of light pollution, some become lost on their way to the sea. Many do not survive. As a member of a volunteer organization called the Puffin Patrol, Addison works to find stranded birds before it’s too late.

Puffins spend most of their lives at sea; their habitats extend across the North Atlantic Ocean. They can dive down some 200 feet below the surface to gobble up the small marine animals that they feed on.

With their pudgy bodies and waddling walks, these pigeon-sized birds can appear clumsy on land. “But underwater, they are so elegant,” says Sabina Wilhelm, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Each spring, puffins return to land to breed. About 600,000 puffins nest in burrows across four islands in the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. This protected area off the east coast of Newfoundland is home to North America’s largest Atlantic puffin colony.

“When the pufflings hatch, they’re like puffballs,” says Suzanne Dooley, a director at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, which runs the Puffin Patrol.

The pufflings remain in their burrows for about 50 days. Then from August through early September, they emerge at night and use the light of the moon and stars to guide them to the ocean.

But some pufflings never make it to the sea—and without help, they are unlikely to survive.

Humans have been using electricity to power lights for more than 100 years. And today there is more bright light—from buildings, cars, street lamps, and billboards—than ever. This light travels in all directions, reflecting off particles in the atmosphere and brightening unintended areas. Big cities produce so much light that the stars can be nearly impossible to see. This excessive use of artificial light is what’s known as light pollution.

The coast near the Witless Bay puffin colony is dotted with several small towns. On cloudy or foggy nights when the moon and stars are obscured, the light pollution from these towns disorients pufflings.

“It’s their first time outside of the burrow,” explains Wilhelm, “so they easily get confused.”

Some birds fly into the towns and get stranded—on roads, in parking lots, in people’s backyards—where they are in danger of being killed by cars or cats.

This is when the Puffin Patrol comes to the rescue. Throughout August, Puffin Patrol volunteers scour the towns for lost pufflings. After capturing the birds, they bring them to scientists, who evaluate the birds’ health. Eventually, the pufflings are released at sea. Since 2010, the Puffin Patrol has rescued more than 4,000 birds.

This article was originally published in the March 2021 issue.