Atlantic Puffin

Backward-facing spines on the palate and a hinged, flexible jaw let a puffin hold one fish while catching the next, so a bird can return to the burrow with ten or more sandeels laid neatly across the bill. The colourful plate on that bill is seasonal and is shed after breeding; a winter puffin at sea is a drab, grey-faced bird most people would not recognise.

The decline is a food-web problem, not a persecution one. Warming water has pushed cold-adapted sandeel and capelin stocks north and out of reach of colonies whose chicks depend on them, and industrial forage-fishery pressure compounds it. Adults survive lean years; the chicks are what fail, which means colonies can look busy for a decade while producing almost nothing.