Why Icelanders throw puffins off cliffs to save their lives
Description
Something amazing happens in Iceland’s Westman Islands each summer. Baby puffins — or pufflings — are thrown from cliffs to save their lives.
The Iceland population of Atlantic puffins is critically endangered. Each season, a female lays a single egg in a deep dark burrow. For the first six weeks after hatching, the puffling is fed by its parents. But when they leave to spend the next eight months at sea, the fledgling is on its own.
Pufflings first leave their burrows at night to avoid predators. They can fly, and their goal is to reach the ocean, but they don’t know where to go and get disoriented by manmade structures and lights. That’s when townsfolk start searching for stranded pufflings. In the morning, they take the birds to cliffs above the ocean and toss them off to reach the sea.
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