The July sea and sky will churn with birds ferrying food to their hungry chicks. Life partners, separated during their time at sea, will reunite and lay their single egg in an underground burrow dug out of the grassy cliffs. Over the next several weeks, well over a million puffins will arrive in the Westman Islands megacolony. In March, as the days lengthen, folks here begin looking forward to the birds’ return. The species’ scientific name, Fratercula arctica, means “little brother of the North.” Puffins are lundi in Icelandic, and on Heimaey a puffin chick has a special pet name: pysja. As they strut around their clifftop colonies in tuxedo plumage and with upright stances, puffins look like proud little men. But for a few months every year, they come on land to breed. The flesh-and-feather versions spend most of their lives far offshore in the cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. Heimaey, which means “Home Island” in Icelandic, abounds with the charismatic seabirds, real and whimsical.Īnton Ingi Eiriksson holds a puffling that he captured the night before. The Vigtartorg playground near the waterfront. Puffin whirligigs spin in the ever-present wind. You can rest on a puffin park bench or watch kids ride puffin bouncy toys on the playground. Cartoonish puffin schnozzes jut from signposts pointing you around town. When you roll off the ferry from the mainland, one of the first things you see is a stone puffin as tall as a man.
You’re never far from a puffin in this fishing hamlet surrounded by soaring cliffs. But nobody loves puffins more than the people of Heimaey. These chunky black-and-white seabirds with endearing sad clown faces are known and loved worldwide. The island, Heimaey, is the largest and the only inhabited one in the Westman archipelago-a cluster of volcanic isles, stacks and skerries that’s home to the largest colony of Atlantic puffins on earth. We’re in Vestmannaeyjabaer, a town of some 4,400 people perched on a roughly five-square-mile island off the southern coast of Iceland. You can’t quit until the puffling is safe. There’s an unwritten rule around here, I’m told. Now they need to collect it and send it safely out to sea. This one made a wrong turn and got stranded on its maiden flight. That’s the name for a baby Atlantic puffin. The baby birds are often drawn to the most brightly illuminated areas, like this street in the town center. Rakel Rut Rúnarsdóttir proudly holds a puffling she has just rescued. This article is a selection from the March 2023 issue of Smithsonian magazine Subscribe
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