Bird Watching Wildlife Photography apply changes. Phone: , Website: www. Phone: Website: www. Phone: Website: northeastwhitewater. Related Articles Filters. Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary. Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge. Birding in Acadia National Park. Get inspired at the Maine Quarterly. Businesses and locations related to: Puffins. There was no sign of homecoming puffins. Kress also knew that the birds were extremely social, so he decided to make Eastern Egg Rock appear more welcoming. Finally, in June , Kress was steering his powerboat toward the island when a puffin landed in the water nearby—a bird wearing leg bands indicating it had been transplanted from Newfoundland to Eastern Egg Rock two years earlier.
But no puffins nested on Eastern Egg Rock that year, or the next. Or the next. A few of the transplanted birds nested with the existing puffin colony on Matinicus Rock, but not one had accepted Eastern Egg Rock as its home. Shortly before sunset on July 4, , Kress was scanning Eastern Egg Rock with his telescope when he spotted a puffin, beak full of fish, scrambling into a rocky crevice.
The bird hopped out, empty-beaked, and flew away, while another adult puffin stood by watching. It was the long-hoped-for evidence of a new chick on the island. Today, Eastern Egg Rock hosts more than pairs of nesting puffins. Boatloads of tourists chug out to peer at them through binoculars. On Matinicus Rock, also a national wildlife refuge, the puffin population has grown to an estimated pairs.
Razorbills, a larger, heavier cousin to the puffin, also nest among the boulders; common and Arctic terns nest nearby. In all, a century after Atlantic puffins almost disappeared from the United States, at least pairs now nest along the Maine coast. Today seabirds around the world benefit from techniques pioneered by Kress and his puffineers. Despite these successes, seabirds are still declining more quickly than any other group of birds, largely because of invasive predators, habitat loss, pollution and baited hooks set out by longline fishing fleets; many species will also likely suffer as climate change leads to rising sea levels and skimpier food supplies, says Tershy.
Project Puffin tactics are already deployed against these new threats. For example, the Bermuda petrel lives on a group of tiny, low-lying atolls off the Bermuda coast, where it is vulnerable to mere inches of sea-level rise or a single powerful storm. Last summer, a petrel chick hatched and fledged on Nonsuch Island—the first to do so in almost years. Eastern Egg Rock has a human population of three, minimal electricity and no plumbing. About two-thirds of the birds succeed in a normal year, he said.
The puffin colonies have suffered only one or two less productive years in the four decades since their populations were restored in Maine, Lyons said. The birds had a poor year because of warm ocean temperatures this summer that reduced the availability of the fish the chicks need to survive, he said.
Researchers have not seen much mortality of adult puffins, but the population will suffer if the birds continue to have difficulty raising chicks, Lyons said.
The discouraging news comes after positive signs in recent years despite the challenging environmental conditions. Puffins can carry several fish back to their nest at a time. The average catch is around 10 fish per trip but the record in Britain is a whopping 62 fish at once!
A puffin can dive for up to a minute but most dives usually last 20 to 30 seconds. While underwater, the puffin swims by using its wings to push it along under the water almost as if it were flying, while using its feet as a rudder. The puffin beats its wings rapidly to achieve this speed reaching up to beats a minute. The wings can move so fast that they become a blur, giving a flying puffin the appearance of a black and white football.
Males are usually slightly larger than females, which is most noticeable only when a pair is standing together. Most puffins do not breed until they are 5 years old. The earliest a puffin may breed is at age 3 but this is only known from zoos. Puffins live a long time and use their pre-breeding years to learn about feeding places, choosing a mate and nest sites. They do bond as pairs. Puffins dig their burrows using their bills and feet. They prefer to make their burrows in earth or between rocks on steep sea cliffs so predators cannot easily reach them.
They use their bills to cut into soil and then shovel away loose material with their feet. They dig dog-like, shoveling dirt out behind themselves. Most burrows are 2 to 3 feet long 70 to cm , which is as long as the arm length of an adult human. At the back of the burrow the parents build a soft nest of feathers and grass where they incubate the egg.
The burrows often have a toilet area at the first bend. As it matures, the toilet is moved closer to the burrow entrance, helping to keep the chick clean. Puffins typically lay 1 egg per year. They usually keep the same mate every season and use the same burrow as in previous years. The male and female share the duties of incubating the egg and rearing the chick. Puffin chicks need a lot of care and need several feedings per day.
Sometimes the puffin parents will leave the egg by itself early in the incubation stages, but as the hatch date nears, they tend to sit on the egg for longer periods of time. The egg needs approximately 40 days or so of incubation before it will hatch. Puffins often live 20 years or more. The oldest known puffin lived to be 36 years. Maximum age is difficult to determine because while researchers are able to band birds, puffins abrade these bands by nesting among boulders as well as spending the majority of their lives in the open ocean, which causes leg bands to corrode over time.
Both these mechanisms cause bands to become too worn to read. Note that Puffins sometimes have TWO bands on their legs. The one with the long string of numbers is issued by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and that number is unique to that individual bird.
But, because the longer numbers are sometimes difficult to read in the field, Project Puffin creates a special "Field Readable Band" which is only used for Maine Coast Projects. This band has fewer letters and numbers, and can be easier to read by Project Puffin staff members observing birds through spotting scopes, and easier to see if the bird is captured on camera.
During winter, the bills and feet of puffins fade to dull shades of their summer colors. Every spring their beaks and feet turn a colorful orange in preparation for the breeding season. The beaks and feet of puffins become brightly colored and the beak increases in size as the bird matures. Puffins use body movements to communicate in a variety of situations.
In mating and courtship the puffins will pair up before they come onto the island from the ocean. Once they are on land, the pair may perform billing, a behavior where puffins rub their beaks together.
This display often draws a crowd of puffins to share in the excitement. An aggressive encounter between two puffins often begins by gaping.
This involves a puffin puffing up their body to look bigger and opening their wings and beak slightly. The wider the beak is opened the more upset the puffin.
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