Birding the Pacific Northwest: Seabird Colony At Haystack Rock

June 25, 2021

Rugged, rocky shorelines and wave-dashed cliffs shrouded in fog and dark spruce forests; temperate rainforests of towering maples and conifers verdantly bedecked with mosses and ferns; majestic snowcapped peaks rising above a resplendent landscape mosaic of cool, dark forests and brilliant wildflower meadows.

This could only describe one place: the Pacific Northwest.

Eric and I recently returned from two weeks of camping, hiking, historic site-visiting and birding in Oregon and Washington, following a meandering loop from the rocky coast of northern Oregon to the rugged mountains of Washington's three National Parks. Along the way, we encountered nearly 130 species of birds, making the acquaintance of 15 new feathered friends, and a handful of mammals as well!

Come along with us as we travel up the Pacific Coast, through inland valleys and forests to the mountains of the mighty Cascade Range!

Our first stop: Oregon's famous Haystack Rock.

Part II: Pacific Northwest Coast

Part III: Inland Valleys & Lowland Forests

Part IV: Olympic National Park

Part V: North Cascades National Park

Part VI: Mount Rainier National Park

Part VII: Crater Lake National Park

Haystack Rock, rising abruptly over 200 feet just a few yards offshore, is the familiar and oft-photographed landmark of popular Cannon Beach, Oregon. A thriving destination for vacationers and tourists, Cannon Beach's famous rock formation is also home to a bustling seabird colony and the birds that have become the town's most beloved mascot: Tufted Puffins.

Haystack Rock is the stronghold of the largest breeding colony of Tufted Puffins (Fratercula cirrhata) in Oregon, and the last Tufted Puffin colony in the continental U.S. that can be seen from land. And for those of us that get deathly seasick just thinking about rolling waves and the horizon pitching and tossing... the opportunity to see seabirds from land is one that cannot, must not be missed! These magnificent little alcids draw thousands of visitors to Cannon Beach each year, all with hopes of glimpsing one of these fantastic flying footballs, these beautifully beplumed "parrots of the sea."

The Fish and Wildlife Service offers this description of the charming Tufted Puffin:

"The puffin is an undeniably attractive bird, looking something like a cross between a parrot and a penguin, sharply made up and impeccably dressed. Its blonde, back-swept head plumes bespeak an urbane haughtiness; the contrast of tangerine bill and snow-white mask against its otherwise somber plumage is at once jarring and irresistible."

But spotting a puffin is not an easy task!

Somewhere up there in that swirling mass of avian life are Tufted Puffins!

Sharing the rock with some 130 puffins are hundreds, if not thousands, of other seabirds. The most numerous seabirds at Haystack Rock are dapper, black-and-white tuxedo-clad Common Murres. Looking for all the world like miniature penguins clinging to a cliff face, murres are also members of the alcid family, closely related to puffins, auklets, murrelets, and guillemots. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Common Murres win the honor of being the most common nesting seabird on the Oregon coast. In flight, they are similar in shape and flight style to puffins, but their white bellies give them away in good light, and their thin bills are tell-tale in silhouette. (One kind older woman at Haystack Rock repeatedly insisted that Tufted Puffins were flying all around us! I tried to inform her that they were in fact just more Common Murres... but hey, what I do know, huh?)

Also holding down nesting territory on Haystack rock are a good number of Pelagic Cormorants and a few Pigeon Guillemots. Western Gulls, of course, fill in the gaps, while squadrons of Brown Pelicans drift by on the breeze, and at the bottom of the rock, Black Oystercatchers forage in tidepools and dazzling Harlequin Ducks dodge in and out of waves. A good pair of binoculars, a spotting scope, or a crazy-long camera lens are essential for spotting puffins amid the general chaos that is a seabird breeding colony!

A small sampling of the Common Murre colony at Haystack Rock. I gave up trying to count them.

My visit to Haystack Rock was my first experience with a seabird colony, albeit a very small one in comparison to the really impressive sites. But I was smitten! What an incredible experience! The sheer number of birds packed onto the rock, filling every available little nook (these photos don't do it justice at all) is amazing! The sheer biomass - the biomass required to feed that biomass - is staggering. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the pulse of life beating on this one comparatively small wave-battered bastion of rock, and eagerly look forward to my next encounter with a seabird colony, whenever that may be! (Watch out, Newfoundland - Cape St. Mary's, here I come!)

More murres. And a few Western Gulls. No puffins yet...

Now I must pause in my narrative to tell a hero-husband story. Eric, my patient and long-suffering non-birder husband is exceedingly supportive of my avian endeavors, forever cheering me on as I seek out target species, sitting contentedly with a history book while I peer through binoculars and spotting scopes, sometimes for hours on end. He very much wanted me to see Tufted Puffins (which he humorously calls "tufty-puffs"), one of the target birds for our Pacific Northwest adventure. So, when we arrived at Cannon Beach in the evening and, after a fruitless hour or two, admitted defeat, he insisted that we return first thing in the morning to find this bird! Our AirBnB was about 35 minutes up the coast from Cannon Beach, and as the next day was slated to be devoted entirely to Lewis and Clark and other historical goodies near Astoria, giving up a couple hours of the morning to spend yet more time looking for a funny-faced seabird was no small sacrifice for him, at least in my mind!

But, as with most things, he turned out to be right about persisting! Within minutes of arriving on the beach the next morning, I had a fly-by puffin sighting as a dark little football buzzed past, headed for the rock. Already the excitement was palpable! But, since we had only been there a few minutes, there was still time to achieve part two of our goal and get at least recognizable "proof" photos of the lifer bird. A minute or two later, I found a pair of puffins near their burrow and managed a number of shots that all look, for better or for worse, a lot like this one:

If you enjoyed playing "Where's Waldo?" as a kid, you will love seabird colonies.
Can you spot the two Tufted Puffins in the admittedly poor-quality photo above?

Heavily cropped, they are at least recognizable! I'm happy with that!

There they are!! Sweet success!

One happy birder. (Photo by one probably even happier husband: now we can get on to the history!)

Tufted Puffins, like many other seabirds, spend the winter months at sea, bobbing along the surface in small flocks and "flying" underwater to depths of 200 feet to catch their prey. In the spring, monogamous pairs come to land to breed, typically returning to the same burrow each year. Puffins dig burrows horizontally into the soil of rocky islands and coastal cliffs, using their webbed feet to tunnel up to six feet into the substrate. At the end of the tunnel, safe from predators, is a nest lined with grass and feathers where the pair takes turns incubating their single egg. Between July and late August, five to eight weeks after hatching, young pufflings (yes, pufflings!) emerge from their burrows. Under the protective cover of darkness, they leap into the unknown, leaving their rocky home to take to the open ocean where they will remain all winter, far from sight of land.

A far better photo of Haystack Rock's Tufted Puffins!
Photo credit: Barb and Larry Hauser
Accessed from CannonBeach.org

The best time to spot Tufted Puffins at Haystack Rock is early in the morning, generally before 10:00 a.m., from April through August. Arriving during low tide allows a slightly closer approach to the rock (and tide pools!) but climbing on the rock itself is strictly prohibited, for your safety as well as the birds'! Bring good binoculars or a spotting scope and prepare to be delighted by this wonderful seabird colony! Back home, the largest breeding colony of Tufted Puffins in California is found on the Farallon Islands, and winter sightings are regular, if not quite common, from Monterey's Point Pinos. (Alternatively... Tufted Puffins can be much more easily spotted in captivity at the Monterey Bay Aquarium!)

Cannon Beach has fully embraced its resident puffins, and volunteers are regularly on the beach during the summer with spotting scopes and loads of information. The town has even put up a few puffin statues, for those ill-equipped or disinclined to spend hours scanning the rock for a distant glimpse.

But I spotted a problem...

Do you see the problem? The white breast on this otherwise very cute statue immediately rules out Tufted Puffin! Whoops! This guy looks more like a Horned Puffin, found in Alaska, to me! But hey, tufts, horns - I guess I can forgive the mix-up! It's a neat carving anyway!

I am glad to see Cannon Beach rallying behind its puffins, because like so many birds, Tufted Puffins are in some trouble, at least in the southern part of their range.

Haystack Rock's puffin colony has decreased from 800 birds in 1960, to around 600 birds in 1988, to the approximately 130 individuals that are recorded at the rock annually now. Oregon's total puffin numbers dropped from 5,000 in 1988 to just a few hundred in 2008, and the story is the same in Washington, where they were listed as endangered in 2015. The good news is that, at least for now, population numbers remain stable in the northern part of their breeding range around the Pacific Rim, in places like Alaska and Siberia.

A number of factors may be contributing to this marked decline in the Tufted Puffin population, including changing ocean and climate conditions, a reduction in populations of fish and other prey (due to anthropomorphic causes), oil spills, fishing net entrapment, human disturbance of nesting colonies, and, perhaps ironically, increased predation from Bald Eagles as eagle populations rebound from their near-brush with extinction.

Visit the Friends of Haystack Rock website to learn about their efforts to protect the puffins.

For more about seabirds of the Pacific Coast, check out this excellent, beautifully illustrated brochure from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and let this incredible group of mysterious birds, the seabirds, capture your imagination and heart!