How a close encounter with a 'clown of the sea' changed my life

Whilst trapped within the darkest recesses of the Scottish winter, staring out from the window onto an expanse of cloud-filled sky, you could be forgiven for thinking that the recent weather fronts buffeting our shores have washed all the colour from the landscape.

The brightness and vivid array of colours that other seasons provide can be hard to bring to mind. When wandering in the local park, with trees bereft of their green leaves, and even grasses without their characteristic lustre, I begin to wonder if summer was actually some dream I had.

Looking at the muted tones in gardens, I remind myself that beneath the hard ground are bulbs poised to become daffodils very soon, and seeds waiting for their moment to become this summer’s eye-catching display of wildflowers. From the cerulean blue of cornflowers or the blood-red poppy, colour will burst through this decaying undergrowth, an eruption of hues, brightening our summer days.

The brightness of a puffin's orange beak is a sign of its sandeel-catching prowess (Picture: Dan Kitwood) | Getty Images

A Scottish species

But this rich palette doesn’t only grow from the soil, it also visits us. Some of our most charismatic species in Scotland vanish for our long drab winters, and return for only a short season. Like a travelling circus, they add a flash of the extraordinary and some drama to our landscapes.

Take the colourful puffin for example, a familiar species to many and one that enriches our coastlines, speckling them with little dots of orange. They are fondly referred to as “the clowns of the sea”.

Although rightly considered a ‘Scottish’ species, puffins actually only spend around two months a year on dry land, frantically rearing a solitary chick, exploiting those long summer days to intensely forage for food to feed it up before disappearing back to the ocean even before midsummer is celebrated.

Thom Quinn meets some puffins | supplied

Luminous, almost glowing

I first saw puffins whilst studying marine biology at university, on a field trip around the Isle of Mull. Making our way out to sea, an adult landed on the water close by and regarded us sceptically, its luminous orange beak almost glowing, before sliding underwater, disappearing into the darkness.

Growing up in Ayrshire, a fair journey away from the parts of Scotland where puffins call home, I wasn’t properly aware of what we have on our ‘doorstep’. Exotic nature was the preserve of Attenborough documentaries, and vivid colours were only beheld in the loud oranges, reds and greens of the tracksuits that me and my pals wore, giving an exotic species a run for their money in terms of flashy colours.

But seeing that puffin whilst on that boat, I was overcome with the amazement of being so close to something so special, but also pride, as we called the same isles ‘home’.

There was something stately and rarefied about the puffin, with its black and white body appearing like a suit, but then this irreverent bright beak and feet, showing a punk-rock streak, something mischievous, like a butler with a mohawk.

Flying halfway to America

On land they cut an even more striking picture. After a full winter drifting around the North Atlantic, they return to their family home to rear the next generation. Unlike many birds, you won’t find them nesting up a tree, they live in the sparse hillsides of Scotland’s coast, nesting in holes in grassy slopes.

There are over half a million puffins in the UK, congregating in huge colonies, creating safety in great numbers, with more than 100,000 eyes all on the lookout for predators, primed to take to the sky or jump for cover underground. Inside these holes, half a metre down, resides a solitary egg, soon to become this year’s ‘puffling’.

Both parents are identical, both with a tangerine beak and eyeliner, as well as black wings. Those wings are the puffins’ magical multi-purpose tool. Capable of flying them halfway to America or propelling them more than 50 metres underwater in order to catch the sandeels they sustain themselves on.

A bright bill sends a message

They will travel hundreds of miles every week in search of fish to feed their offspring, catching around 1,000 small fish to raise just one chick. It’s those fish that provide the colour for their beak – fish proteins, named carotenoids, which the puffins metabolise into the familiar orange beak. So, a particularly bright bill becomes a statement of their fish-catching prowess and their suitability as a mate, just like a lion’s mane or a rhinoceros’s horn.

Oddly enough, this is a bird at its most elegant whilst out of the skies: either darting like a deranged arrowhead in pursuit of fish deep underwater, or whilst standing proudly beside its burrow, like a sentry outside the royal residence.

By the end of that field trip, I was hooked and intent on learning more about this amazing species. It led me into a career in conservation, and working on projects to protect puffins. One such project involved working on one Scotland’s largest colony of puffins in the Outer Hebrides.

Sadly, man-made climate change is causing warming of our seas, and these shifting temperatures are having an impact on puffins and the food they eat. Our actions, often unintended, can have severe consequences for our beloved clown of the sea.

At the end of each summer, the circus disbands, the colonies of puffins disperse across the Atlantic Ocean, leaving us for another year. Each puffin going its own way, some north to the waters of Iceland and the coast of Greenland, or south to Spain; others stay closer to home, moving around the Irish Sea.

I’m endlessly grateful for the splash of colour they bring to our country each year, but acutely aware that we can’t take this for granted and must do more to protect and restore our wonderful species in Scotland.

Thom Quinn, WWF Scotland