Every year at the end of the summer, the children of Iceland’s Westman Islands have a job. It’s a job that requires flashlights and cardboard boxes. It’s a job that allows them to stay up extra late. What is this special job? Saving the pufflings!​

​Pufflings are baby Atlantic Puffins. These seabirds live in the North Atlantic Ocean. They look like small, round penguins with colorful, parrot beaks. ​

For most of the year, puffins live in the water. They swim on the surface and dive for food. In the late spring, puffins come to the cliffs to lay their eggs. The eggs spin in circles instead of rolling. That way they don’t fall into the waves.​

The pufflings hatch from the eggs in the summer. The puffin parents feed their babies for about six weeks. Then, when the babies are old enough, the parents stop feeding them and leave them on their own. Most of the pufflings fly toward the water. They return to the sea to start their lives as adult birds.​

Some of the pufflings don’t make it to the ocean. They get confused. The lights of the city look like the moon and stars. They fly towards the light and get lost in town.​

When the pufflings come to town, children are allowed to stay up late. They go outside and hunt for pufflings. Using flashlights to find them and cardboard boxes to keep them in, they take them home and care for them through the night. ​

In the morning, the children take their pufflings to the aquarium where they are counted. Then, they carry their pufflings to the ocean where they set them free, headed in the right direction.