A seabird that grows long, pale-yellow head plumes for the breeding season.
During breeding, the face is white and the large bill red, with long pale-yellow plumes. Outside breeding, the face is gray and the plumes are much reduced.
Tufted puffins breed on land but spend much of the year at sea. A geolocator study reconstructed 42 migration journeys by breeding adults from Middleton Island, Alaska, using records collected mainly in 2018–2020. The birds wintered offshore in the eastern Gulf of Alaska and the Northeast Pacific, averaging about 616 km from their colony. Their locations shifted south during winter: the mean distance from Middleton Island rose from about 560 km in November to 716 km in February. They left in early September.
The mapped range crossed U.S. and Canadian waters and reached the high seas. At this site, the winter range extended beyond the nesting island into a cross-border marine landscape.
BC Conservation Data Centre · S3B (breeding); S4N (non-breeding) · British Columbia, Canada (provincial ranks)
On 27 April 2023, the BC Conservation Data Centre assigned the Tufted Puffin provincial ranks S3B (breeding) and S4N (non-breeding). BC ranks describe local extirpation risk: S3 is special concern and vulnerable to extirpation or extinction; S4 is apparently secure, with some cause for concern. B and N are modifiers for breeding and non-breeding occurrences of mobile animals. The report notes local declines and concentration at a few large colonies. Of 28 BC nesting sites, compared with 43 historically, 10 held over 100 birds. Most major colonies are protected, but Marble Island is not. Pressures include introduced predators, oil spills, gill-nets and human disturbance. These ranks apply only within BC, separate from global IUCN status.