It's puffling season in Iceland! A puffling is a young puffin, and puffling season is when these youngsters get help from humans—who toss them over cliffs—to successfully find their way out to the ocean instead of getting lost in town. The Atlantic recently published some beautiful photos from this year's rescue, explaining:
Residents of Iceland's Westman Islands are currently on puffin patrol. During the months of August and September, an annual tradition brings entire families out to the streets and harbor of Vestmannaeyjar late at night, where they work to find and rescue misdirected young puffins, called pufflings . . . Once they are rescued, the pufflings are brought to either a beach or a cliff to be released to the sea. The photographer Micah Garen recently followed some of these young rescuers on patrol on the island of Heimaey.
NPR explains that the pufflings need help because city lights confuse them:
This yearly tradition is what's known as "puffling season" and the practice is a crucial, life-saving endeavor. The chicks of Atlantic puffins, or pufflings, hatch in burrows on high sea cliffs. When they're ready to fledge, they fly from their colony and spend several years at sea until they return to land to breed, according to Audubon Project Puffin. Pufflings have historically found the ocean by following the light of the moon, digital creator Kyana Sue Powers told NPR over a video call from Iceland. Now, city lights lead the birds astray.
NPR also describes the process of getting the youngsters out to sea:
Many residents of Vestmannaeyjar spend a few weeks in August and September collecting wayward pufflings that have crashed into town after mistaking human lights for the moon. Releasing the fledglings at the cliffs the following day sets them on the correct path.
This human tradition has become vital to the survival of puffins, Rodrigo A. Martínez Catalán of Náttúrustofa Suðurlands [South Iceland Nature Research Center] told NPR. A pair of puffins – which mate for life – only incubate one egg per season and don't lay eggs every year.
"If you have one failed generation after another after another after another," Catalán said, "the population is through, pretty much."
Ása Steiners, a travel photographer who was born and raised in Iceland, recently posted a great video highlighting some of the adorable pufflings and the humans who gave them a helping hand. She explains:
It's Puffling season! I can't describe how excited Atlas was to get to join the Puffling season in Vestmannaeyjar. We stayed up late and joined the locals in the search of Pufflings. It felt like they were raining from the sky, few of them just dropped down right in front of us. Hopefully there's a strong Puffin population this year.
The Pufflings leave their nests late summer, when their parents have left out at sea. It's hunger that drives them to leave the nest (bless them). They use the moon to navigate out at sea, but they confuse the city lights with the moon and end up crashing into town where they don't have much chance to make it to the ocean on their own. They are at risk due to car traffic, cats or even just end up starving. So that's where the locals come to the rescue.
Then they store them in a box overnight and early in the morning they head to the seaside cliffs, allow the Pufflings to get air in their wings and then throw them off so that they can safely navigate out to the ocean where they will spend the next couple of years before returning as adults to Vestmannaeyjar islands.
This happens every year at the end of summer and has become an annual tradition for the locals of Vestmannaeyjar and friends and relatives. The Puffling season can last for a few weeks or as long as the adult Puffins are around.
Many people make their way to the islands to join in on the mission. My dad took me once and I have some childhood memories of releasing my first Pufflings and now I want to do the same for Atlas. I'm so thankful for all these adventures that my parents brought me along on.
This shared mission brings the community together and it helps the Puffin populations to safely begin their journey to the sea.
See more of Iceland through the beautiful photography of Ása Steiners on her Instagram or YouTube.
Previously:
• Puffle the sheep patiently waits to be welcomed into house
