奇速英语

If you see a girl and a boy throwing two baby puffins (海鹦) off a cliff (悬崖) on the Westman Islands, you may not understand why they’re doing so. In fact, they are just trying to help save them.

Puffins are the most common birds on the Westman Islands in Iceland. Different from most sea birds, they are able to go under water to 60 meters deep to catch fish. Each spring, they lay eggs in holes on cliffs. 40 days later, they will fly back to the sea, leaving the young there. Baby puffins would spend about six weeks in the holes alone before they are ready to fly to the sea.

In the past, young puffins could easily find the sea with the help of the moonlight. But now, bright lights of the city often make them lose their way. Many of them end up flying into the town. However, it’s not an easy thing for young puffins to fly up and find food in the town, so they may lose their lives there.

That’s why people on the Westman Islands have decided to help those young puffins. In late summer, when young puffins leave their holes, local people often go out to look for the missing puffins at night. If they find one, they would pick it up and put it in a box. The next day, they would take it to the cliff and throw it off. In this way, young puffins can fly safely to their new home for the next few years.

The unusual tradition also helps make sure the puffins will be back to their holes another year.

A puffin lays one egg each year at most, so the help from the people on the Westman Islands is of great importance to the survival (生存) of puffins.