Food shortages affect the puffin chicks

Puffin ChicksPuffins Photo: Hanno. Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Food shortages affect the puffin chicks this year as well

The world’s largest puffin colony, on Røst, can be left without a viable young litter for the eleventh consecutive year due to lack of food.

 

– I wish I could say that this will be a good year, but this far it does not look like it, says Tycho Anker-Nilssen, senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) to NRK.

The reason for the food shortage is that the birds can not find their main nutrition, which is herring. The food shortage causes the parents to leave the chicks in the nest or to break the eggs.

Endangered species

Colony at Røst in Lofoten is one of the world’s largest, but has for years declined dramatically. At its peak, there were a one and a half million avian on the island. That was in 1979, but now, almost 40 years later, there is only one-fifth left, NRK writes.

Røst has probably had the biggest decline, but Anker-Nilssen tells of decline throughout the Norwegian coast, from Runde outside Ålesund and all the way to Hjelmsøya outside the North Cape, with only a few bright spots here and there.

The Puffin is a hole-nesting auk (seabird) of northern and Arctic waters, with a large head and a massive, brightly colored triangular bill. The bird is on the national red list of endangered species

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today