The Island of Puffins

It is a special place that draws us to visit at some deepest level. Here, where the land meets the sea, life itself began on earth and it still thrives. Perhaps most people would say they vacation at the shore to escape their normal routines. However, some visit there because they seek out that special place, to experience the richness of life.

It is certainly rich in bird life. In winter, birders visit the coast when few others do. I wrote about the four alcid species that we saw on the Massachusetts shore last winter. There is one more alcid so rare we did not see it, but it is probably the most appealing of all.

The Atlantic puffin adorns shirts and walls because of its extraordinary bill, which gives the bird a comical appearance. Many years ago I visited Machias Seal Island in far eastern Maine, the only place where you could find this bird at that time. One captain in one small boat took a few people out each day in summer to see the breeding colony.

Now over fifty people take a large boat out from Bar Harbor, Maine to an island farther south called Petit Manan. Here the puffin has been reintroduced, and is now one of several species using the island to raise young.

An island is a little like the earth itself, a sanctuary floating in the midst of an endless indifferent cosmos. Most of the ocean harbors little or no living organisms. It is only where the land rises up to meet the sea that creatures abound, from the tiny plankton and krill that feed on the nutrients created by turbulent currents, to the enormous whales that feed on the krill.

The birds need the land where the young can be born, and the surrounding waters where they find food to feed them. It is the dry land and the shallow sea around it that together make the island of life.

As our boat approached, hundreds of white terns flew back and forth, the incoming birds carrying fresh caught fish in their bills, the outgoing ones using those empty bills to call out their victory cry. The raspy screams from several thousand common and Arctic terns filled the air as we searched the water for floating puffins.

They swam quietly in pairs or groups scattered off the rocky shore, sometimes quite close to the boat as the captain maneuvered around to keep from drifting onto the rocks. Occasionally they would take flight, their stubby wings beating furiously. The huge, flat bills should have borne them head first into the sea, but they carried them proudly aloft.

These bills, grooved with red and yellow stripes, are used mostly for courtship. The black back, cap and throat frame a large white cheek patch with a black eye set in the center, giving puffins the clownish appearance that makes them so attractive. Just before the breeding season they grow this bill just for the "look." Afterward the horny material wears off and the bill is much smaller and all black.

There were young birds hidden in the clefts of boulders on the shore, waiting to be fed. When they are big enough, they will scramble out of the burrow in the dead of night and make their way clumsily to the sea. If they make a mistake and move farther inland, the gulls would devour them as they cowered in the open at daybreak.

Just ahead there was a part of the island that rose steeply from the water, and atop the ledge were a handful of razorbills. They also had similar thick bills, but the larger bodies and black heads made them appear more menacing than humorous. Also black were the small guillemots that were everywhere swimming and floating. They have small sharp bills, but bright white wing patches as their courting card.

After a bit, we stood off shore and motored out to sea. About twenty miles out more birds began to appear, and the whales that went with them. Both are here because hidden beneath the surface is another uprising island where life abounds due to the meeting of cold and warm currents. The hump-backed whales were just below the surface and the shearwaters were gliding just above it.

Next week a story about these ocean-going birds that "shear" the water.