Birding in Maine: Seabirds & Puffin Islands!

Everyone knows and loves the songbirds: bluebirds, robins, finches, sparrows, warblers.  Jewel-like hummingbirds have a strong following among flower gardeners, and powerful raptors are favorites of many birders and non-birders alike.  Hunters toting shotguns as well as those with binoculars know and love waterfowl of all sorts (albeit for strikingly different reasons).  Shorebirds, with their often minute differences, have their own particular subset of devotees as well.  But it takes a special kind of dedication to become intimately familiar with one of the most mysterious groups of birds: the seabirds.  

Living their lives entirely at sea and coming ashore only to breed, typically on rocky, remote islands, seabirds are largely inaccessible to the average birder (let alone non-birder!)  Many of us have our first introduction to seabirds with feet planted firmly on dry land, while peering across the blue expanse through spotting scopes.  There, distant birds - shearwaters, jeagers, alcids, albatrosses and more - are learned more by shape and flight style than anything else.  (Learn more about my experiences seawatching here!)

To see seabirds up close requires... a boat.  And my previous experiences on boats (and other things that bob and sway and move) have not been so great.  But while visiting New England in June, there were a few Atlantic seabirds that I really, really wanted to see!  So, at the suggestion of a birder friend whose advice I trust, I stocked up on Dramamine and booked not one but two separate boat trips to see the famous Atlantic Puffins of Maine.

Atlantic Puffin

As it turns out, Dramamine is a wonder drug, working its magic to transform what would otherwise have been utter misery (i.e. violent seasickness) into utter delight.  Thus fortified, Eric and I ventured out on our "puffin cruises" off the rocky coast of Maine: the first from New Harbor, the second from Bar Harbor.  (I should note that the second cruise, from Bar Harbor, followed close on the heels of a storm and involved riding some impressive (to me) four-foot swells!)  

Designed for tourists as much as birders (because who doesn't love puffins??), these "cruises" range from short hour-and-a-half jaunts to longer, four-hour expeditions.  All trips run from May through July or August, during the puffins' breeding season, and are designed to take puffin enthusiasts within binocular range of breeding colonies, which are found on rocky islands not far off-shore.  

Eastern (not "Easter") Egg Rock: Formerly desolate, this island is now home to thriving breeding colonies of puffins and terns.


Our first destination was Eastern Egg Rock, well-known (in the conservation world) as the world's first successfully restored seabird colony.  Seabird colonies up and down the coast of Maine (and elsewhere) were decimated in the nineteenth century by hunting, egging, and displacement by larger, more aggressive gulls, the populations of which were expanding rapidly in response to a growing food source: waste generated from a burgeoning fishing industry and human population.  Many seabird colonies were extirpated altogether.  Prior to recolonization efforts, the last record of puffins nesting on Eastern Egg Rock was in 1885; terns held out until 1936, but disappeared from the island as a nesting species after that year.  

Efforts to recolonize the island with puffins and terns began in 1973.  Puffins were enticed back to the island with decoys and mirror boxes, and 1,000 young birds were relocated from Newfoundland to Eastern Egg Rock in hopes that the impressionable birds would later return to nest.  (Puffins are faithful birds, returning annually to nest in the same area where they hatched.)  Terns were also encouraged to re-colonize the island through the use of decoys and the broadcasting of calls.  Decoys, sound and mirrors are all forms of social attraction, a method that works by tricking social, colony-nesting birds into thinking that an area is already home to a breeding colony, and therefore a suitable spot for them to set up house as well.  The thought process, one assumes, goes something like, "Hey look, there are a bunch of birds over there that look/sound like me!  I think I'll join them!"  An empty island is unlikely to attract lone puffins or terns looking for a place to nest.

The methods that were first implemented in the 1970's proved to be successful when in 1980, the first terns nested on Eastern Egg Rock; in 1981, five pairs of puffins nested on the island as well.  Today, the island supports a breeding colony of nearly 1,400 terns, including around 150 pairs of endangered Roseate Terns, which represent more than half of the entire Gulf of Maine population of these special birds.  Through the 1980's and '90's, around fifteen to twenty pairs of puffins consistently nested on the island.  That number began to rise steadily in the early 2000's, and by 2017, there were 172 nesting pairs of puffins on Eastern Egg Rock!  

Read more about Atlantic Puffins on Audubon's Project Puffin website, or check out the book!

A raft of Atlantic Puffins near Eastern Egg Rock


While pretty much everyone with their eyes open gets to see puffins on these special cruises, birders who know what to look for also have a shot at seeing more interesting seabirds while cruising along on the puffin boats.  

Not far from land, on our way out to Eastern Egg Rock, I had a distant look, through binoculars, at my first truly exciting bird - a proper seabird - bounding lightly along the surface of the water like a seagoing swallow.  Quickly raising my camera, I snapped away at the surface of the water between two lobster buoys, the general vicinity in which I had seen the tiny seabird, which was basically invisible to the naked eye.  It vanished nearly as abruptly as it had appeared, and I was soon distracted by other birds.  But I was pretty sure about what I had seen...  Only once we were back on land did I check my camera and confirm with great delight that I had indeed captured a few recognizable images of this special bird: a Wilson's Storm-petrel.  

Wilson's Storm-petrel


At six inches in length and weighing just over one ounce, these miniature seabirds are scarcely larger than a Barn Swallow.  Even so, they are one of the world's most widely distributed and abundant seabirds, perfectly at home on rough seas from the North Atlantic all the way to the icy Antarctic.  The dangling feet seen in these photos is characteristic of storm-petrels: pattering their feet on the surface of the water may help them maintain their position as they flutter just above the surface, scanning for prey, and may also stir up the very small planktonic prey they feed on.  I recently read that the name given to this group of foot-pattering birds, "petrel," is derived from the name of the Apostle Peter (whose name is derived from the Greek word "petra," for rock), who is known for his brief walk on the surface of the Sea of Galilee (see Matthew 14:22-33). 

Wilson's Storm-petrel

It wasn't long after my brief encounter with the storm-petrel that I had my first puffin sighting: a quick fly-by of a black-and-white flying football (the classic description of an alcid in flight), with a massive, brilliantly colored bill.  

Atlantic Puffin in flight

Soon after that, we began to see rafts of puffins bobbing along on the surface of the water.  My distant views of Tufted Puffins on Oregon's Haystack Rock paled in comparison to this experience!  Puffins were all around the boat, both sitting on the water and flying past, seemingly heedless of the boatful of admiring onlookers!

Atlantic Puffins


Near the island, the bird sightings came fast: Common Eiders, loafing on the rocks and paddling near the rocky shore; Black Guillemots winging past, flashing their bold white wing-spots; Great Black-backed Gulls and Laughing Gulls patrolling the sky and shore.  The birding in the waters surrounding Eastern Egg Rock was excellent!  

Common Eiders (adult & immature males)


Black Guillemot 

Near the island, clouds of terns rose in a cacophony of sound and shining white wings.  Notoriously noisy and territorial, garrulous terns act as defenders of the entire island, inadvertently protecting puffins in the process, as they vigorously harass and drive away predatory gulls.  Without the terns, which are harmless to puffins, the small, comparatively docile alcids and their eggs and young would be easy prey for opportunistic gulls.  In addition to innumerable Common Terns, Arctic and endangered Roseate Terns breed on the island as well.  

Terns swirling around and loafing on Eastern Egg Rock

A Roseate Tern on the wing (notice the black bill)

Arctic Tern in flight

And then another alcid, even more exciting than the puffins showed up: a Razorbill!!  These incredibly striking puffin "cousins" (fellow members of the alcid family) inhabit cold Atlantic waters, breeding from Maine to the north.  (During the winter, they venture south as far as waters off North Carolina.)  

Razorbill


Razorbill


Another member of the alcid clan, Common Murres, offered close-up looks on our second puffin cruise, from Bar Harbor.  These dashing black-and-white birds are equally at home on the Pacific Coast as well.
Common Murres


And then, the real show-stopper: a lone Northern Gannet materialized out of the blue horizon, curious about the boat.  It circled the boat maybe a dozen times or more, gliding past on long, lazy wingbeats and affording excellent looks for those of us seated on the top deck.  I mean, this bird was eye-level with me, looking right at me with those incredibly wild blue gannet eyes!  It was like being in a nature documentary!  (For whatever reason... no one else on the boat was nearly as excited as I thought they should have been about this bird...  I guess the puffins get all the glory.  Sigh.) 

Northern Gannet


Gannets are known for their mind-boggling cliffside breeding colonies (famously at Newfoundland's Cape St. Mary and Scotland's Bass Rock, which I hope to visit someday!) and their incredible dives.  Shaped like a dart, gannets plunge-dive bill-first into the water at speeds up to 60 miles per hour, from heights of over 100 feet!  Massive flocks of gannets diving would be an incredible sight to witness!!  This lone gannet... dove once from maybe ten or twenty feet up.  But it was still amazing to see how streamlined the gannet's body becomes, as it folds back its wings and stretches out its neck to enter the water bill-first, with barely a splash.  A perfect 10!  (Check out this video for to see what I mean!)

Northern Gannet


When our visiting gannet decided the boat was nothing special (and not offering food), it settled down to rest on the water while we continued on in search of more puffins.

Northern Gannet

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