Travel →
Puffins at East Egg Rock, Maine
(page 3 of 4)
In the downpour one morning, she approached one burrow and found water was lapping at its mouth. It was full of water. Certain the chick had died, she bent down, held her breath, and reached her arm all the way in. "In the back corner of the burrow was an air pocket," she said. "A puffin chick was paddling around, with just its beak sticking out." Many chicks nearly drowned because the holes wouldn't drain.
Finally, in 1976, they found the solution. They built burrows in blocks of sod. "They were puffin condos," Kress says with a smile. Each burrow was L-shaped, a required feature for happy puffins, Kress learned, and because they were sod, the chicks could scratch away at the sides and shape their homes to their taste.
Kress and his four research assistants rotated two- and three-day shifts on the island and spent several hours each day feeding the chicks. "It is as if we raised these birds," reads one entry in the daily journal the researchers have kept from the beginning of the project.
After four or five weeks the puffin chicks would get restless in their burrows, pacing back and forth and often refusing to eat. That usually meant they were ready to fledge -- that is, to leave their nests to survive in the wild on their own.
Although puffins feed and are most active during the day, their young fledge at night, an unusual practice, Kress says, that protects them from the gulls. "It shows how strong the gull presence has been for them to adapt to it in such an effective way," he says.
On several occasions Kress has crawled out on the rocks on the island after midnight to listen for the telltale scraping of plastic bands against the rocks, and, if he's lucky, to watch the birds in the moonlight as they stumble their way to the sea. By dawn, the puffins are far enough out at sea to be free of danger of the gulls.
Once the young birds fly or stumble into the sea, the researchers await their return. In subsequent years, even while they were caring for the current year's class of chicks, they eagerly scanned the skies and the rocks for signs that the earlier years' classes had returned.
From this standpoint, the summers of 1974, 1975, and 1976 were long indeed. Despite hours and days of searching the horizon, they didn't spot a single puffin.
Finally, on June 12, 1977, as Kress was rowing ashore in a dinghy, a puffin flew overhead and plopped down in the water nearby. As Kress rowed, the bird swam toward him, each as curious as the other. Kress knew in a moment he had found what he was looking for: around the bird's left leg was a white plastic band -- certain evidence that puffins had returned to Eastern Egg Rock. "Oh, what a great day," he says.
The rush of excitement, however, was followed by more disappointment. "Weeks went by and nothing," Kress says. Finally they checked other nearby islands. On Matinicus Rock, about 26 miles east, they found what they'd hoped to see at Eastern Egg Rock -- puffins with white and multicolored bands on their legs.
"It's very common for puffins to wander around for two to three years before they breed," Kress explains. Over the next couple of years the team set out puffin decoys and mirrors on the island's rock formations in an effort to attract the real birds. They began an effort to attract arctic terns and other terns by playing tape recordings of bird calls. Terns breed rapidly and are especially aggressive against gulls, thus a puffin ally. Between 1977 and 1980 puffins returned to the island in increasing numbers, and the despair of the first years turned to excitement.
Reader Comments
Registered users can add comments.
Registration is free, and just takes a moment.
Login or Register.