Eastern Egg Rock & Project Puffin
By 1901, Atlantic puffins were all but gone in the United States. Down to a single known nesting pair on Maine’s Matinicus Rock, a granite island 20 miles off the coast where wildlife enthusiasts paid a lighthouse keeper to protect two birds.
Photo courtesy of @sarah.e.bryant
Things began to change in 1918 when the the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was passed banning the killing of many wild birds across the country. Slowly, Atlantic puffins returned to Matinicus Rock, but none of Maine’s other islands that served as home to the charismatic seabirds for centuries.
Photo courtesy of @don_toothaker
Photo courtesy of @don_toothaker
Atlantic puffins seemed to endure and repopulate other areas in the North Atlantic from Northern Canada and Greenland to Iceland, Norway, and the Faroe Islands, but by the 1960s the puffin was virtually forgotten in the United States.
Photo courtesy of @sam.b.driscoll
It wasn’t until a young zoologist got a summer job cleaning dishes at the National Audubon Society that a plan to reintroduce puffins to Maine came into view. Dr. Stephen Kress listened to tales of puffin research on the cliffs of Matinicus Rock and made it his mission to bring the birds back to other areas of Maine’s coast where puffins once flourished. Throughout the mid-70s, Kress and a few colleagues camped out on Maine’s Eastern Egg Rock where they dug borrows, re-introduced puffin parents and young chicks, and would deposit fish in each borrow twice per day.
Photo courtesy of @sam.b.driscoll
Photo courtesy of @sam.b.driscoll
In 1977, Kress took a creative approach to reintroducing puffins to the area. After 100 years of their absence from Eastern Egg Rock, the group partnered with a local woodcarver and used decoys to make the island feel more welcoming. On July 4th, 1977 an Atlantic puffin was spotted making a water landing nearby.
Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Ocean
Photo courtesy of @sarah.e.bryant
Finally, in 1981 an Atlantic puffin was seen carrying a beak full of fish into a dirt crevice and Atlantic puffins were once again breeding on Eastern Egg Rock after more than a century of their absence from the area.
Photo courtesy of @sam.b.driscoll
Today, more than 4000 puffins call New England home for the summer arriving in April to breed and gorging on local baitfish until they depart in August. Though Project Puffin simply wanted these seabirds back in Maine, their methods and use of decoys is now credited in reintroducing over 25% of the world’s endangered wild birds to their natural habitats.
Photo courtesy of @sam.b.driscoll
Photo courtesy of @sarah.e.bryant
A big thank you goes out to our friends @sarah.e.bryant @sam.b.driscoll and @don_toothaker for their photos of local puffins. Please see more of their work on Instagram.
