This episode is brought to you by the Mazda CX-50. Move and be moved.

Hey there, Kelly McEvers here, co-host of the Atlas Obscura podcast. We are counting down to the

holidays with 12 days of wonder. We are now on day 10. Yesterday, I talked about how my family

and I like to go on road trips at the holidays.

We all have traditions at this time of year, and today we're going to talk about one that takes place in Iceland.

It has to do with a certain cold weather bird, and it is very, very cute.

Producer Abby Peralt has the story.

Okay. producer Abby Peralt has the story. On the Westman Islands, a group of islands off the southern coast of Iceland, there are these

steep cliffs that jut out over the ocean. And every spring and summer, these cliffs come

to life with Atlantic puffins.

These black and white seabirds with expressive, wistful-looking eyes and a bright orange beak.

They're also very cute.

These islands are home to the largest Atlantic Puffin colony on the planet.

Typically, more than 1.5 million puffins flock here each year to take up residents in their burrows and breed.

That's around one fifth of the world's total Atlantic Puffin population.

And if all goes well, their pufflings, these small fluffy chicks,

emerge from their burrows in the late summer and early fall and set out over the ocean,

where they'll spend the next few years of their lives.

But some of them, actually thousands of them, wouldn't make it, were it not for the Puffin Patrol.

I'm Abby Peralt, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today we're heading to Heime, the largest of the Westman Islands, where we'll meet the local heroes who head out into the streets,

searching for wayward pufflings.

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