Selly lives on an island in Iceland. She searches the sky every day. As she watches from high on a cliff overlooking the sea,she spots her first puffing of the season soon the sky is speckled with them.
They are returning from their winter at sea to Selly's island to lays eggs and raise pufflings chicks. They return to the same burrows year after year. Its the only time they come ashore.
Selly and her friends climb over the cliffs to watch the birds. Each pair they see will soon tend an egg deep inside the cliffs. When the pufflings egg hatched, the parents will bring fish home to feed the chicks. The night of the pufflings will come when each puffling takes its first flight.
All summer long the adult pufflings fish and tend to their chicks . By August, flowers the blanket the burrows. With the flowers in full bloom,Selly knows that the wait for the night of the pufflings is over. The chicks have grown into young pufflings. Now it is time for Selly and her friends to get out their cardboard boxes and torches for the night of the pufflings. Starting tonight, and for next two weeks,the pufflings will be leaving cor their winter at sea.
In the darkness of the night, the pufflings leave their burrows for their first flight. It's a short, wing-flapping trip from the high cliffs. Most birds splash-land safely in the sea below. But some get confused by the village lights. Hundreds of pufflings crash-land in the village every night. Unable to take off from that flat ground, they run around and try to hide.
Selly and her friends will spend each night searching for stranded pufflings that haven't made it to the water. But the village dogs and cats will be searching too. Even if the dogs and cats don't get them, the pufflings might get run over by vehicles. The children must find the stray pufflings first.
Armed with torches, the children wander through the village, searching the dark places. The put the pufflings in cardboard boxes. Every night they take the rescued pufflings home. The next day, Selly and her friends bo down to te beach. It's time to set the pufflings free. Selly holds each puffling up so that it will bet used to flapping its wings. Then she swings it up in the air and lunches it out over the water beyond the surf.
Day after day., Selly's pufflings paddle away, until the nights of the pufflings are over for the year. Now Selly and her friends don't have to sleep late in the day so they can stay out at night to rescue thousands of pufflings
