Something is seriously wrong on the East Coast — and it’s killing all the baby puffins

By Rowan Jacobsen

The new poster child for climate change had his coming-out party in June 2012, when Petey the puffin chick first went live into thousands of homes and schools all over the world. The “Puffin Cam” capturing baby Petey’s every chirp had been set up on Maine’s Seal Island by Stephen Kress, “The Puffin Man,” who founded the Audubon Society’s Project Puffin in 1973. Puffins, whose orange bills and furrowed eyes make them look like penguins dressed as sad clowns, used to nest on many islands off the Maine coast, but 300 years of hunting for their meat, eggs, and feathers nearly wiped them out. Project Puffin transplanted young puffins from Newfoundland to several islands in Maine, and after years of effort the colonies were reestablished and the project became one of Audubon’s great success stories. By 2013, about 1,000 puffin pairs were nesting in Maine.

Now, thanks to a grant from the Annenberg Foundation, the Puffin Cam offered new opportunities for research and outreach. Puffin parents dote on their single chick, sheltering it in a two-foot burrow beneath rocky ledges and bringing it piles of small fish each day. Researchers would get to watch live puffin feeding behavior for the first time, and schoolkids around the world would be falling for Petey.

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Hundreds of dead puffins have washed up on east coast beaches

Hundreds of puffins washed up on the east coast of the UK are likely to have died of starvation as a result of the recent severe weather.

RSPB Scotland said it has taken numerous calls from members of the public about the birds, found on beaches stretching from Aberdeen and Angus down to Northumberland.

It is the worst puffin "wreck" — the death of a large number of seabirds in a single incident — in almost 50 years, the conservation charity said.

Many razorbills and guillemots have also perished, prompting fears about the upcoming seabird breeding season.

Dr Barnaby Smith, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology which is part of the Natural Environment Research Council, said the birds may have been using up all their resources just fighting against the unseasonably cold temperatures and strong easterly winds.

Continued:  http://news.stv.tv/north/219104-puffin-wreck-is-worst-in-50-years-say-rspb-scotland/