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Abstract

The movements of seabirds during the immature period generally remain poorly understood, primarily due to the challenges involved with tracking birds that do not regularly return to a nest. This knowledge gap prevents us from gaining a full understanding of the areas used by seabird popula.ons. Here, we acempted to track the post-fledging movements of Atlan.c Puffins Fratercula arcCca from Skomer Island (Wales, UK), by deploying geolocators on chicks ready to leave the nest.Despite our very small return rate (just two loggers out of 54, recording 485 and 196 days of data aier fledging, respec.vely), our results provide a first glimpse into the distribu.on and scale of movements of young Puffins aier fledging. The young Puffins undertook movements comparable in scale to those of post-breeding adults, and there were considerable differences between the two individuals. New ini.a.ves to track juvenile seabirds in much larger numbers will hopefully soon provide more insight into seabird post-fledging movements.