Traditions, for many of us, are the things we usually do with family, such as Christmas lunch, Heritage Day braais or going to the beach on New Year's Day. But whatever your tradition is, it doesn’t come anywhere close to being as cool as a tradition in Iceland, one that you may want to add to your bucket list.
TikTok user @kyanasue, aka Kyana Sue Powers, shared with the world an Icelandic tradition which might come as a bit of a shock. Her clip starts off with someone throwing a bird, a puffin, off a steep cliff with seemingly treacherous waters below.
Video: @kyanasue/TikTok
Before you get all worked up and angry, there is a reasonable explanation for this.
Towards the end of every Icelandic summer, baby puffins are born on the Westman Islands.
These babies are known as pufflings.
Naturally, pufflings are meant to fly to sea, but thanks to an increase in artificial light sources around the bird's breeding grounds, they become disoriented, confusing these lights for moonlight, which they are wired to seek out.
Knowing this, droves of townsfolk come out during the summer evenings to help provide the little pufflings with some direction. But catching a fleeing puffling is no easy feat, as shown in Powers’s videos.
When the pufflings come out of their burrows for their first flights out to sea, the townspeople are waiting to snap them up so they can be released safely towards the sea, away from artificial light.
Powers says in the video that even pufflings swimming in the harbour get confused and have to be caught with nets as the oils in the water may make it difficult for them to swim, even though they’re strong swimmers.
Puffins are pelagic (open sea) seabirds that feed primarily by diving in the water. Think of them as penguins who learnt to fly.
Tiktok user Torri van Putten commented: “You had me in the beginning, I thought people were just YEETING them for no reason.”
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