Puffins are Maine's most popular seabird, and for good reason. These funny little creatures look like small penguins with parrot beaks. In fact, they are sometimes called parrots of the sea or clowns of the sea. Atlantic puffins spend most of their lives in the ocean, but each year they come ashore to breed on isolated, rocky islands. In North America, there are summer puffin colonies on certain islands from eastern Canada to Maine. Every summer, thousands of tourists and birdwatchers take special puffin cruises to see the birds splash about in their natural environment.
Puffin cruises leave from New Harbor, Port Clyde, Boothbay Harbor, Bremen, Cutler, Lubec, Jonesport, and Bar Harbor, Maine. Cruises operate from June to early August, but if you're hoping to see chicks hatch, plan on making the trip in late June to early July. While puffins are the main attraction on a puffin cruise, passengers often get to see many other types of birds, including black guillemots, cormorants, terns, petrels, ospreys, eiders, razorbill auks, shearwaters, phalaropes, and jeagers, and even whales, seals and dolphins. Many puffin trips also take you past scenic lighthouses that you may not be able to see from land. Be flexible when you are making your puffin-viewing plans, since inclement weather may prevent the cruise boats from leaving on a particular day. At just 10 inches tall Atlantic puffins are smaller than many people expect, so bring binoculars and a camera with a zoom lens to get the most out of your puffin cruise. Any time you go out on the ocean, you should dress warmly and wear sunscreen.
Puffins are not in danger of extinction. In fact, there are an estimated 12 to 16 million puffins in the world. Atlantic puffins can be found near the coast of eastern Canada, Iceland, Greenland, and northern Europe and Russia. The Gulf of Maine is at the southernmost extreme of their range, and less than 1 percent of the world's puffins nest here. If you had the impression that puffins are endangered, it may be because the puffin colonies in Maine -- the only ones in the United States -- were almost wiped out. Several hundred pairs of puffins used to nest here each year, but human activities had threatened the puffins. People killed the birds for food, for their eggs, or for their feathers, which were used to decorate ladies' hats. Additionally, commercial fishing had depleted the puffins' food supply, and the introduction of rats and other land predators on some islands seriously disrupted the puffins' nesting activities. Eventually there were only a few isolated pairs of puffins in the entire state. Project Puffin, a collaboration between the National Audubon Society and the Canadian Wildlife Service, began re-introducing puffins on Eastern Egg Rock in Muscongus Bay in 1973. Scientists involved with Project Puffin transferred hundreds of chicks from Newfoundland over a period of many years, and the campaign has been successful; puffins are once again nesting on Eastern Egg Rock. Thanks to the efforts of puffin-friendly lighthouse keepers, there are still thriving natural puffin colonies on Matinicus Rock in Penobscot Bay and on Machias Seal Island on the border between Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. Machias Seal Island has by far the largest population of puffins each summer, and it is the only island where puffin cruise boats are allowed to land (weather permitting).
Puffin Facts
- There are four kinds of puffins.
- The Atlantic or common puffin is the only one found in Maine. To see a horned puffin or a tufted puffin, you would have to visit the Pacific coast. The rhinoceros auklet is also considered a type of puffin, although it does not look much like the others.
- The Atlantic puffin's scientific name is Fratercula arctica, which means “little brother of the north" in Latin. The name can also be interpreted as "little friar," a reference to its black and white coloring.
- Puffins may look like penguins, but they're not related. Puffins live only in the northern hemisphere while penguins live only in the southern hemisphere (unless they are in zoos).
- Puffins eat small fish such as herring, hake, smelt, and capelin, but they have also been known to eat crustaceans in the winter.
- Puffins can drink salt water.
- Each year, a puffin will return to nest on the same island, and often even in the same burrow in the rocks.
- Puffins can live to be 20 to 30 years old.
- Puffins can both fly and swim very well, and when they swim they use their wings to propel themselves through the water, steering with their feet.
- Puffins mate for life.
- Female puffins lay only one egg each year. A baby puffin is called a chick or a puffling.
- After the summer breeding season, puffins become less colorful.
- The great black-backed gull and the herring gull are the main natural predators of the puffin. Increasing numbers of gulls were preventing the puffins from returning to their nesting grounds, so scientists have helped protect the puffins by reducing nearby gull populations.
- Adult puffins make a noise that sounds like groaning. Young puffins tend to make a peeping sound when they are hungry.
- For $100, you can adopt your very own puffin for a nesting season! You'll get a certificate of adoption and a biography and a color photo of your puffin. Adoption fees help support the biologists who study and protect these fascinating birds. Puffin adoptions make great gifts for that friend or relative who has everything!
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