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Sunday, July 15, 2018

World's First Restored Seabird Colony



The beautiful, fast swimming, and unusual Atlantic Puffin left the breeding grounds of Eastern Egg Rock off the coast of Maine and it took nearly one hundred years for them to return.

The only puffin native to the Atlantic Ocean, this member of the Auk family was once known as the Common Puffin.  This bird has had its troubles, and its numbers are still low in certain parts of its range, but it has been victorious with so much against it.  In order to get there, it had to have a little help from friends in Bremen, Maine, the Audubon Nature Camp of Hog Island.

These birds are fabulous swimmers, diving as much as two hundred feet in order to capture their quarry to satiate their chicks.  For anyone that has been a part of research, this is no easy task to keep the rapidly growing young healthy and developing steadily.

Wiped out in the 1880s by hunters on the seven acre Eastern Egg Rock and more protected islands, Project Puffin was born.

How would puffins return to the area to breed?  How would they be attracted in order to stay and return?

Audubon's Donal O'Brien Jr, a collector of decoys and a professional carver, and ornithologist Steve Kress, created a brainchild through the use of decoys.  Puffins were attracted back to Eastern Egg Rock with wooden birds and recordings as a last chance to save the species.  It was never dreamed that the project with be a huge success and a pilot program for attracting puffins the world over would result.

As social birds with a cause, the historic population once again populated the islands, but the eccentric idea took years of effort.  Interns live on the islands guarding the nests of valuable sea birds, not only for puffins, but Common and Arctic Terns, Storm Petrels, and more.  Then came chick translocation, decoys, mirrors, and light colored carpet to control the mustard weed, as chicks were lost in it.  Trial and error paid off, creating a successful story that only could be pulled off by scientific ingenuity.

However, other problems, like scavenging gulls, had to be dealt with.  Anyone that knows gulls is aware of their persistence and the fact that they are opportunists.

In the 1980s, the success of the program started growing worldwide.  Bermuda needed help with their national bird population, the Cahow.  Audubon assisted and breeding pairs were attracted.  House cats decimated millions of seabirds on Ascension Island off the African coast in the 1800s.  The cats were eradicated, and in 2012 birds began nesting again after steps were taken to renew life.  More invasive species were removed from New Zealand's  islands for breeding birds there.  Japan had breeding birds nesting on the rims of volcanos, and they were moved to safer ground to establish another colony.  The success stories continue.

As you can see, bird life has been renewed in certain areas, just by some simple steps that were taken in the dawn of the project.  It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears to gain ground, which has been taught to people in other parts of the world due to the love of birds and the importance of their survival.  Balanced ecological systems yield a lot more than rampant population spread without being aware of the consequences.

BirdLife International, the National Audubon Society, American Birding Association, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, American Bird Conservancy, and so many other organizations driven to the pursuit of protecting our world of avian life as we once knew it is a struggle.  The more that we can provide education to the public, the better we will be as a whole.  We can each do our part.  Learn as much as you can, and give that information to friends and relatives, for it will not stop there.  Teach our youth and they will be our future.

Help me help THEM.




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