As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Saturday 24 August 2013

On A Rocky Maine Island, Puffins Are Making A Tenuous Comeback

Rocky, windswept Eastern Egg Rock, about 6 miles off the coast of Maine, was once a haven for a hugely diverse bird population. But in the 1800s, fishermen decimated the birds' ranks — for food and for feathers.

When ornithologist Stephen Kress first visited 40 years ago, the 7-acre island was nearly barren, with only grass and gulls left. Not a puffin in sight. Not even an old puffin bone.

"But it had great habitat because there were great boulders on the island, and I could imagine the puffins standing on top of them," Kress says.

No imagination is needed now. Thanks to a relocation experiment pioneered by Kress and his co-workers in the Audubon Society's Project Puffin, this treeless little island is now kind of a bird tornado.

In peak years, more than 200 of the orange-and black-beaked puffins nest here. Ten other bird species — including the endangered roseate tern — have been tempted into the island habitat, with an assist from handmade burrows, decoys and recorded bird calls. In nesting season, humans are posted to wave off predators such as black-backed gulls and eagles.

Kress heads to a bird blind out on the perimeter of the island. He's surrounded by a whirl of laughing gulls and terns — they're mostly what's heard here since puffins are silent above ground.

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