THE PUFFINS OF THE ROCK
Pullin 'Town is a lonely rock in the North Atlantic, where the puffins come with much misgiving to nest once a year, and have just now arrived. Mr Olin Pottingill, who has spent some time as a lonely naturalist on the island rock, describes the curious habits of the puffins during their enforced stay. They are the most comic and the most helpless of the seafaring birds, with a beak like a parrot’s and quite unsuited for attack or defence against others of the gull tribe, notably the black-backed gull, a marauder who ruthlessly preys on them. For this reason they hate the land and keep continually at sea for most of the year. On Puffin Town they seek crevices in the rock for the one egg laid by Mrs Puffin, who shares with Mr Puffin the five weeks’ job of hatching it. Puffin Town is a very silent colony, making none of the noise of other gull haunts, perhaps out of prudence so as not to attract notice. Very soon after the one chick is hatched the family takes to sea again.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19400920.2.17.15
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Evening Star, Issue 23686, 20 September 1940, Page 3
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188THE PUFFINS OF THE ROCK Evening Star, Issue 23686, 20 September 1940, Page 3
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