No trip to Iceland without puffins. But what if you only travel in November? Then the season is over. It is known that the puffins arrive at the breeding sites by the end of April and have flown out to sea at the latest by mid-August [1]. Otherwise you cannot – as a matter of fact – watch them ashore. And are all breeding sites aren't accessible. Before we get back to November and how you can still see them, let's talk a little bit about the puffins. Puffin in Icelandic is lunda (in German Lund, in Swedish lunnefågel, in Norwegian lundefugl).
Puffins are seabirds that feed primarily by diving in the water [2, where you may get more information than a non-ornithologist can ask for]. They breed on coastal cliffs or offshore islands, nesting in crevices among rocks or in burrows in the soil. Actually much like penguins in the southern hemisphere. Probably the popularity of penguins and puffins can be explained by the funny appearance of these little fellows. Only one of the three extant species is foound in the North Atlantic Ocean, you might have guessed it: the Atlantic puffin. They have small wings, enabling swimming with a flying technique underwater, but have beat their wings rapidly when flying low over the ocean's surface.
The first puffins I saw were plush toys. In the souvenir shops framed pictures, aquarelles, T-shirts (at 26 €, which is a bargain in Iceland) and others are sold. It is used for logos or advertisements. One was so stylized that it rather looked like the tufted than the Atlantic puffin. If you seek to watch puffins in their natural habitat, May or June would be better choices.
Links an Annotations:
[1] https://travelstories-reiseblog.com/papageientaucher-beobachten-island/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin
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