People Helping Animals

Before you run off to call the Icelandic version of the ASPCA...this is normal, they do it every year, and it's not nearly as weird as it sounds to say that the people of the Westman Islands in Iceland toss thousands of baby puffins off a cliff.

Whoa. It's actually an important thing, and it saves bird lives. It's called "puffling season."

You see, Atlantic puffins have their chicks ("pufflings") on high cliffs overlooking the sea. And when the young birds are ready to fly away ('fledge") they leave the bird colony and go off to see for a few years, and return back to the land for breeding.

But the problem is, city lights are confusing to the little pufflings. A woman named Kyana Sue Powers tells NPR that it was moonlight that used to guide the young ones to the ocean, but now the lights have them mixed up, so pufflings are set free during daylight because they would fly back into town if they left at night.

Powers says she was at Vestmannaeyjar, on Iceland's South Coast, last summer, when she saw a curious thing: children and adults running around carrying boxes and flashlights.

That's called "Puffling Patrol." In August and September, the people of Vestmannaeyjar round up stray puffers who crash land in town, having confused town lights for the light of the moon. 

The next day, these kind people take the birds to the cliffs and set them free to fly off.

This is necessary for the survival of the species, explains Rodrigo A. Martínez Catalán of Náttúrustofa Suðurlands [South Iceland Nature Research Center]. He says that puffins mate for life, incubate only one egg per season, and do not lay eggs every year.

"If you have one failed generation after another after another after another," Catalán said, "the population is through, pretty much."

In other words, without these puffling-tossers, no more puffins! People to the rescue. And Powers says it's a communal thing, people out on the streets having a great time doing something great.

Puffin patrol begins around 9 PM and goes on until as late at 3 in the morning. They go where the lights are to find the lost ones: golf courses, hospitals, schools, construction sites. Sometimes people get in their boats and cruise the harbors, looking for birds there in the water.

Catalán says one should wear gloves when picking up the little peepers. That protects people from avian flu and the birds from chemicals and oil on human hands. They keep the bird overnight in a cardboard box with some grass inside, and then it's off to the cliffs the next day.

"It's a great feeling because you just rescued this little guy. And when you bring him to the cliff – it's the first time in his life he's seeing the ocean, and he's gonna live there for the next few years," Powers told NPR. "I'm always like, 'Bye buddy, have a great life, I can't wait to see you again.'"