An Atlantic Puffin mother returns
with a fishy meal for her hungry fuzzy chick.
In this burrow, it's not only the delivery service that's first class,
but also the dining room itself.
It sets pretty high standards with its classy sloping
ceiling and soft floor made out of grass and feathers.
Such a beautiful nest,
doesn't come without effort.
After a female and her mate had spent eight months out at sea,
their home needed quite a big makeover before she could lay her egg.
Everybody knows that renovating an old house is a challenge on its own,
but as a puffin pair, you also have to deal with external problems.
The two birds didn't just have to do massive amount of digging,
but they also had to defend their borrow from intrusive new breeders.
And as if this wasn’t enough, they also had to fight off
annoying gulls from a not so well-situated neighborhood.
Quite adventurous is for a young family, right?
So let's take a look back to the day the young puffin pair
set foot on the island.
From late April on Atlantic Puffins start preparing themselves for breeding season.
Dozens of colonies gather on rocky islands across the North Atlantic,
like here, off the coast of northwestern Scotland.
A young puffin pair has just returned to their favorite burrow.
They get down to business
right away and start refurbishing and repairing the underground apartment.
Puffins use their bills to cut into the soil
and then shovel away loose material with their feet.
Obviously, the male doesn't like this messy job but
someone's got to do it.
And hey, giving a burrow a make over
and the fresh lining of soft grass is still easier then digging a completely new one.
On the Rocky Island,
the real estate market is really tough, though it's not uncommon for new breeders
to occupy a burrow which the original homeowners can only get back
if they fight for it.
The loser then has to dig a new one from scratch, though
this pair is lucky to be able to use the underground nursery from last year.
The hole in the ground doesn't
look as fancy as the neighbors once - their front porch even has a roof.
But it does have a hidden entrance.
The tunnel extends for about two meters with a nest at the end.
This cozy chamber will provide a secure hideaway for the mating pairs single egg
The borrow even has a separate toilet so that all the other rooms stay clean.
For the young pair, the flat really is on fleek, and the surrounding seems perfect, too.
Like other puffins, they really love real estate with a front row ocean view.
Easy access to fish and some elevation.
So it's easy to take off with those stubby little wings.
And of course, it needs to be packed in with lots of neighbors.
In fact, puffins always nest near other puffins, lots of them.
Tens of thousands of them.
They create so-called puffin cities.
The colony where our pair lives contains at least 40,000 puffins.
The birds with the colorful bills
and fleshy orange feet spent two thirds of the year out at sea,
living mainly on a diet of small fish like herring and sand eels.
But every spring, they return and congregate in giant nesting colonies.
There are thousands of burrows all over this hillside.
Amazingly, the neighbors never seem to break through to a next door burrow.
One theory is that they're deep, guttural calls, which they only make
underground, are a way to warn off the puffins digging next door.
Another reason could be
something scientists recently found: out using their sense of smell,
birds like puffins can create maps in their minds.
While others are still on the lookout for a new home.
Our mother to be has already laid her egg.
For the next few days, she and the male will take turns
incubating their egg and feeding out at sea until the chick finally hatches.
Now the hard work of parenting has begun.
All over the hillside, freshly baked parents returned to their burrows
with their beaks stuffed full of fish for the hungry pufflings waiting inside.
Unfortunately for the puffins, the neighborhood is not as well-situated
as they thought.
There are some cheeky gulls around the gulls patrol the puffin colony,
looking for a chance to steal any unguarded eggs or chicks.
When the parents returned from the fishing trips.
They have quite the challenge to avoid this intrusive gull gangs.
But puffins are smart, and they know that safety comes in numbers,
so they fly together in a huge circular formation called a “puffin wheel”,
to confuse the gulls. Our male is also in there.
He circles around for several times before he drops out of the wheel
when he gets close to his burrow.
From here, he always tries to take the fast line
because when isolated and exposed, he is more vulnerable to attack.
Most gulls can’t eat an adult puffin, but they can force it
to drop its load of fish, which the gull is happy to retrieve.
The male has no luck.
A sneaky gull decides to steal fish instead of diving for it.
A free meal for the gull.
A lot of wasted effort for a puffin dad with his chick growing fast,
there is no choice but to head right back out to sea for more fish.
While the male and female hunt for fish outside every day
inside the borough, things that progressing.
The chick has got comfy in his dark hole in the ground.
All it knows is that every so often mom or dad shows up
at the front door with a mouthful of fresh fish.
The young one had to be patient
to find the best fish and avoid the gulls at the same time,
the parents travel up to 50 kilometers out
to sea and back, but the room service is paying off.
The chick is already almost as large as an adult.
Gulping down fish head first as fast as it can, is it's favorite activity.
The very welcome food delivery from its parents will continue for weeks to come.
When the chick is finally ready to fledge,
it will leave the burrow at night - to avoid those gulls - and take off .
Like the other puffin kids from the colony,
it will then remain at sea all alone for years until it returns to its island.
And who knows?
Maybe it will also use the same
burrow, the place where its own life began, to start its very own puffin family.
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