July 17: Eastern Egg Rock

Yesterday my husband and I were fortunate enough to be able to go along on an outing to Eastern Egg Rock in Muscongus Bay. Normally the island is off-limits to visitors, as it's a protected seabird nesting site--most noted for being the island where Project Puffin, a National Audubon program that has restored Atlantic Puffins to Maine waters, originated. But we (and several others) were accompanying Project Puffin founder Steve Kress for this special trip, and thus got to spend almost two hours on the island observing the birds and learning from the five summer interns about their work and lives there.

Being in the blinds so we could watch the birds was a thrilling experience, but even more moving was witnessing the hopeful signs of new young life on the island: nests with eggs and fuzzy chicks of several species, including Laughing Gull, Common Tern, Black Guillemot. (Puffins nest in not-very-accessible burrows underground, so we couldn't see those.) While the interns report good nest success so far, the real challenge for the parent birds is getting enough food into their chicks for them to fledge and reach adulthood. Climate change has affected offshore patterns of the fish that terns and puffins feed their chicks, so food availability is the critical issue for these birds right now. Only time will tell how many survive this summer. But when you touch a fat, wriggling fuzzy butterball of a chick, hope is tangible thing.

Eastern Egg Rock--

seabirds swirl and clamor,

my heart a fixed point of joy.

Gulls and terns overhead. The buildings are the interns' community space and their outhouse.

Atlantic Puffins, as observed from a study blind

Laughing Gull nest with eggs and chick

Black Guillemot chick held by island intern

Atlantic Puffin, adult

Black Guillemots, puffin and Laughing Gull. The red numbers mark puffin burrows.

Common Tern and its whining chick

Project Puffin founder Steve Kress shows us a Laughing Gull egg

Posted with Blogsy 

July 20: Puffin Quest

Went Down East to join a bunch of birder friends on Andy Patterson's charter boat out of Cutler to Machias Seal Island, in search of a Tufted Puffin that has been seen there sporadically over the past few weeks.

What's the big deal? Well, the Tufted Puffin is a bird of the Pacific Ocean; only three or four have been observed in the Atlantic, ever. This one's been hanging out around this amazing seabird nesting island--a disputed US/Canadian territory--along with thousands of its alcid relatives: Atlantic Puffins, Razorbills, and Common Murres.

Fourteen birds looking for one bird among thousands, but the seas were calm and skies clear, making it a perfect afternoon to linger offshore and scan for hours from the gently rocking boat. If the Tufted Puffin had been there, we'd have found it. And we had such an awesome time trying that we didn't mind that it wasn't there. As they often say, in the end it was all about the quest, all about the calm and beauty we found on the way.

Machias Seal Island Light

Atlantic Puffins and one Common Murre

Alcids offshore

A strange sea lullaby--
lapping of waves on island,
seabirds' mews and groans.

June 2: Nesting

We spent all morning on the Friendship V whale-watching boat out of Bar Harbor on a pelagic birding trip as part of the Acadia Birding Festival. We cruised way out into the Gulf of Maine past four different islands with lighthouses on them, including Petit Manan, which is part of the Maine Coastal Islands NWR. The island was a chaotic mass of terns and gulls in the air and on the rocks, screeching and crying shrilly, and in the water, flotillas of puffins, razorbills, guillemots, and murres. How the interns who live on the island don't go insane from that constant noise is a mystery, but the sheer dynamic swirl of life out on these nesting islands is awe-inspiring--especially when you consider that these birds are creating life on virtually bare rock, their nests just tiny hollows along a bleak shore.

Gulls near Egg Rock

After a hot shower and lunch, I had to rush off to guide my afternoon field trip at Asticou Azalea Garden and Thuya Garden in Northeast Harbor. While the flowers seemed a little ahead of last year, with many of the azaleas and rhodos gone by, there were still breathtaking patches of blooming beauty--a fire-red azalea that looked like it was flickering, a virtual burning bush; apple trees still laden with white blossoms; these allium poking up amid ferns:

Allium with ferns, Thuya Garden Rhododendrons, Thuya Garden

What moved me the most, though, were not the stunning flowers and the Japanese aesthetic of Asticou, nor the mix of cultivated and wild at Thuya, which is tucked into a forested hillside, fenced in like the Secret Garden. It was a female redstart on a nest right near a trail, the little warbler startling off it every time someone walked by, chipping nearby with obvious agitation. Why would she choose that spot? Was she drawn to a view of the flowers? Will her eggs survive all the disruptions? Is she any better off than a tern laying her eggs on bare earth, at the mercy of the gulls?

Can you see the redstart nest (sans bird) in the center of this bush?

Startled off her nest,
the redstart chirps in distress--
so precious, each egg.

August 1: Predators

Today is the pagan holiday of Lughnasa or Lammas, the first harvest holiday of the season. I celebrated this perfect summer day on the Elizabeth Ann, watching seabirds in Muscongus Bay under blue skies and on calm seas for Friends of Maine Seabird Islands' fourth annual seabird adventure. We cruised out to Eastern Egg Rock with about 120 people on board, most of whom hoped to see puffins. And puffins we saw, though not in great numbers. Puffin Project researchers on the island counted record 109 pairs this summer, but only a handful of the colorful little birds were hanging around offshore today. What we did see: black guillemots, laughing gulls galore (1,500 pairs of those on the island!) making a racket along with the clouds of terns (common, Arctic, and endangered roseate all nest on the island), cormorants, eiders, a big cluster of ruddy turnstones, a couple of Wilson's storm-petrels dancing on the waves, a few gannets in the distance, some "peep" sandpipers, several great black-backed and herring gulls, osprey, bald eagle, harbor seals, and harbor porpoises.

And a peregrine falcon, which strafed the island, flushing every bird into the air in a screeching, swirling mass. It stooped, the fastest bird on earth, and when it rose into the air again we could clearly see it held a tern in its talons. The falcon flew off trailing an angry mob of terns dogging it like silvery wasps, but it did not relinquish its prey. Early harvest.

The cruise began to feel like a Discovery Channel nature show when around the next bend we came upon a great black-backed gull attacking a young laughing gull headfirst. While we watched in awe, the gull killed this bird almost half its own size and dragged it off to tear apart for a meal. Another early harvest. As Sue Schubel from Maine Audubon reminded us over the boat's speakers, "It's not being mean, it's just eating dinner." I've never seen anything like it. But apparently the birds nearby had, as they barely even noticed the commotion just a few feet away.

As we circled the island several times we also were able to observe many guillemots catching rock eels the same vivid red-orange as their feet. Terns and puffins flew in to young with beaks full of fish. A riffle on the water chased by a gull revealed where a school of fish was driven to the surface by larger fish. And just before we turned away to head back to Port Clyde, a peregrine scared up the birds once more...

A lot of harvesting going on, the bounty of the sea made visible by this island teeming with healthy bird life. And a joyful day overall, which we celebrated by enjoying our own harvest from the sea at Cod's End in Tenants Harbor on the way home.

Not gull's prey this time,
cormorants look away, calm,
dreaming of herring.