Penny Puffin

Dear Reader,

I am excited to be the first letter Larry the Letter Carrier shares with you! Larry hopped by my place on Eastern Egg Rock, Maine the other day and I started to tell him about my adventure with my cousin Paulie, and he was like, whoa mate – put in a letter so I can share with my online friends.

I hope you find my adventure with my cousin amusing! Paulie lives on Machias Seal Island in Canada which is about 4 hours away from my home. Me and Paulie are really good friends – and we try to visit one another as much as possible. With this visit, we decided to take a little trip further down the coast of Maine. We thought it would be fun to visit the zoo.

The zoo was about two hours away, so we decided to have some fun along the flight over the Atlantic Ocean. This may surprise you, but puffins can dive 200 feet below the water’s surface. Paulie was doing beak dives and tail feather dives and he taught me how to do a wingspan spin dive. Imagine soaring above the ocean and then with your wings outspread, you begin a spin before hitting the water and then you begin flapping your wings to dive deeper and deeper. It was so much fun! Paulie is an amazing diver.

Once we reached the mainland, the zoo was a short waddle from the water. This is where things get funny. Me and Paulie saw all the people watching the birds in the zoo. We decided to play a trick on them! We climbed into the penguin pen and pretended to be penguins. We slid on the ice in the water and waddled just like the penguins did. We heard all the people laughing and commenting on how pretty we were. We waddled to the edge and looked right at them. We gave them a big puffin smile and slid back into the water. As they were walking away, they were talking about how incredible the penguins looked – and they were stunned we had such large wings! We quietly waddled behind them, following them to the parrot exhibit. Without anyone seeing us, we climbed inside the cage and began swinging on the bar and climbing around in the cage. Do our best to act like parrots – we couldn’t talk like the parrots did, but we could bend our heads and look like parrots do. We heard the crowd say, “Look, those parrots look just like the penguins we saw. How amazing! We looked right at them and started swinging back and forth on the parrot's trapeze. We have heard puffins are sometimes mistaken for penguins and parrots since we are black and white and love water and have beautiful, orange-colored beaks. After today, we know people really are confused by our appearance. Our day trip was really fun, I hope you enjoyed reading about it!

Remember, writing is right on! So, write a comment below.

Your friend,

Penny Puffin

Do you remember? How deep puffins can dive? Where Paulie lived? What two birds do puffins look like?

Additional puffin tidbits – the wingspan of a puffin is 18.5 to 24 inches, puffins can fly 55 miles per hour, in flight, their wings beat 400 times per minute.