Richard Collins: Valuable information from trackers on puffin legs

Seabirds such as auks, puffins and sea-parrots have tough lives at sea — but are new food shortages causing further damage to these species?

Picture: Sam Langlois Lopez

Thomas Nagel’s celebrated essay, What Is It Like to be a Bat, appeared in the Philosophical Review in 1974. What’s it like to be a puffin is an even more intriguing question.

As a sea-parrot chick, you would first see the light of day from inside a burrow on a steep grassy slope overlooking the sea. An only child, with only the odd rabbit for company, your devoted parents feed you juicy sprats and sand-eels for six weeks. Then, one day, they fail to show up. Distraught, you peer in vain from the mouth of the burrow but, alas, you will never see your folks again. You are on your own. The pangs of hunger force you to take the plunge on your wobbly wings and crash down into the sea, a leap into the unknown. It’s ‘sink or swim’ from then on.