HORNED PUFFINS deliver food to their chick at the colony by holding the prey cross-wise in their bill.
It’s fairly easy for scientists to catch puffins and find out what they are feeding their chick.
Click here for data collected from Duck Island, a small island in Cook Inlet, in 1997, as part of a research project conducted by the USGS Alaska Science Center.
Puffin parents were feeding their chick mostly sand lance, a long, needle-like fish.
There are 8 bill-loads (a load of prey carried by the parent puffin) in this data-set.
Can you answer the following questions?
1. What is the average (mean) number of prey per bill-load?
2. What is the minimum number of prey per bill-load?
3. What is the average (mean) weight of a bill load?
4. Chicks were being fed an average of 3 times per day. Take the average (mean) weight of a bill-load, and calculate how much food (in grams) chicks were receiving a day.