PUFFINS

SURELY the puffin is one of the world’s most endearing creatures. Seen up close, this is a small, chunky bird that walks as though wearing galoshes. Its cheeks are puffy, its eyes are marked like the tuft of a sofa, and it flies like a buzz bomb, with rapidly beating wings. Part of the puffin’s charm is the contrast between its sober black morning coat and earnest expression, with its orange feet and brilliantly colored beak. It looks rather like a clergyman on a binge.
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Puffins and razor-billed auks are both members of the alcid family, whose characteristics include black-and-white plumage and short, stubby wings that propel them underwater for fishing. Puffins and auks usually are found in the same nesting area, often along with terns, whose noisy and aggressive tactics help drive off potential predators, primarily gulls.
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A century ago, puffins nested on six of the outlying islands of the coast of Maine, as far west as Muscongus Bay. But the harvesting of eggs by farmers and fishermen and the killing of adult birds for their feathers destroyed their populations. By 1900, they were gone from all the Maine islands except Matinicus Rock.
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Then, in the mid-1970s, Steven Kress, director of Audubon’s Ecology Camp on Hog Island, launched an imaginative program to reintroduce the puffins to their old nesting sites. Burrows were dug by hand in the tuff of Eastern Egg Rock, in Muscongus Bay, and young birds were brought from the abundant puffin colonies of Newfoundland.
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Naturalists became foster-parents, handfeeding puffin chicks for months. The chicks were allowed to fledge naturally and leave to spend the fall and winter in the North Atlantic. Then the waiting began. Would they return to nest? To encourage them, the naturalists stood puffin decoys on the rocks and broadcast seductive mating calls out over Muscongus Bay. After years of effort by volunteers of Project Puffin, the puffins reared on Eastern Egg did, indeed, return to mate and nest, and the colony has been successfully reestablished.
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Today you can see puffins in three places along the coast of Maine if you arrive before August 15—Eastern Egg Rock, in Muscongus Bay; Matinicus Rock, at the entrance to Penobscot Bay; and Machias Seal Island, way down east. At Eastern Egg and Matinicus Rock, you can see them from your boat, but it is extremely difficult to land, and you would be likely to disturb the birds. At Machias Seal Island, you can land and watch the birds from blinds, only a few feet away.
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Maine is at the southern end of the puffin breeding range, which extends north to Iceland and south to the British Isles. The puffins arrive at Machias Seal in late March but remain in the water around the island for some time. In the shelter and concealment of the large granite boulders, they make simple nests from seaweed and grasses. A single egg is incubated by both parents. The boulders also serve as convenient launching pads for these short-winged birds, which frequently have difficulty achieving flight.
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The peak hatching time is mid-June, and for the next month-and-a-half the demands of the offspring totally occupy the parents. Often one parent will spend all day away from the island diving for small herring, their principal food. Finally the young refuse food, and the parents leave them to fend for themselves. For three days to a week, they fast in their burrows before leaving their nests in the middle of the night for the surrounding waters. Before learning how to fly, the young become expert swimmers and divers. By mid-August, all the puffins have left the island to spend the fall and winter in the North Atlantic.
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Maine Birding: more puffin information and photos