TIL Atlantic puffin beaks are... even more interesting than I realized. Apparently most photogenic photos of puffins are of their breeding plumage. That's not too odd, lots of birds look "nicer" like that. But part of puffin breeding plumage is extra growths on their beaks. Basically, the colorful half that's furthest away from their face is visible year round, but the colorful parts closer to the mouth fall off when they're done to reveal the beak is this funky lopsided-arrowhead-lookin' weirdness. Here's a diagram where everything with a letter label on the left falls off, shown right.
I won't call the result hideous or gross or anything but uh wow yeah ok I see why people mostly post the breeding plumage photos. Thank you Joel Sartore of National Geographic for providing one of the few non-breeding-plumage photos I could find: https://www.joelsartore.com/bir034-00070/
about the prospect of having this dressed-down photo out there. Based on this deduction, I conclude that Big Puffin is trying to keep this information hush-hush. Unfortunately, it is too late for their dignity. They are too round to be anything but extremely cute.