| From: Brumar89 | 7/7/2024 1:22:15 PM | | | | | |
Beautiful American Goldfinch wearing a wild yellow daisy on its head! American Goldfinches are unusual among goldfinches in molting their body feathers twice a year, once in late winter and again in late summer. The brightening yellow of male goldfinches each spring is one welcome mark of the approaching warm months.
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| To: Brumar89 who wrote (2893) | 7/7/2024 1:23:03 PM | | From: Brumar89 | | | |
Attacked on All Sides: Wading Birds Nest in New York’s Harbor Islands
The migratory birds face habitat loss due to development, predation, human disturbance and climate change.
By Lauren Dalban
July 6, 2024
 A black-crowned night hero is seen in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Credit: Courtesy of Teresa Doss
For bird enthusiasts and average residents alike, the sight of wild, colorful migratory birds like the great egret or the black-crowned night heron, in a dense and loud city like New York is something to behold.
Every spring, these wading birds migrate to the unoccupied islands along the city’s coast, as well as to certain areas on the city’s mainland, to reproduce and forage for food. For the past four years, Shannon Curley, a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell, has traveled out to these islands to coordinate the New York City Bird Alliance’s annual nesting harbor herons survey.
“When you’re standing on some of these islands,” said Curley, “you have to the right, just hundreds of nesting birds, and then to the left you have the New York City skyline. It’s a very unworldly experience.”
Since 1985, the bird alliance has continuously monitored the nesting habits of 10 species of wading birds that appear every spring, and worked to conserve their habitats in the long term. In May 2022, they even observed the more reclusive great blue heron nesting on an island in the East River called Mill Rock–the first confirmed nest in New York County.
“Every time we go out there and we see them,” said Dustin Partridge, director of climate and resilience at the New York City Bird Alliance, “I’m still struck that they’re literally dinosaurs. There are dinosaurs living in New York Harbor.”
The long-standing nature of the survey has not dulled the excitement of those who conduct it.
Though their nesting habits likely predate the city of New York in its modern form, these wading birds consistently face habitat loss due to coastal developments, human disturbance, predation and sea level rise. Their health and behavior can also be impacted by pollutants or contaminants in local waterways.
Currently, these wading birds nest on six of the many small, unoccupied islands along the city’s coastline. Though they are able to acclimate to a small level of human presence, humans entering their area can cause entire colonies of wading birds to abandon an island, or not to return to it the next year.
“Keeping off of islands where there’s signage for nesting birds is important,” said Curley. “We don’t want to lose the colony because one person decided they wanted to go have a bonfire on an island.”
Humans can also have indirect impacts on these bird populations. According to the bird alliance, when local residents release predators such as raccoons into green spaces along the coast, this also has unintended consequences. Raccoons have been known to swim to the islands within reach, preying on the smaller wading birds and their chicks. Birds like snowy egrets and ibises often nest in shrubs closer to the ground, making them more vulnerable to these kinds of predators.
Two years ago, herons abandoned Subway Island in Jamaica Bay, largely due to the presence of raccoons.
“It was once the most abundant and diverse island in Jamaica Bay,” said Partridge. “In 2022, we arrived, and it was silent—there were no birds there. All that was left behind were a lot of raccoon tracks and scat and a few eaten carcasses.”
 Snowy egrets often nest in shrubs closer to the ground, making them more vulnerable to predators like raccoons. Credit: Courtesy of NYC Bird AllianceHuman disturbances and the increase in predators can cause habitat loss for these bird species which have already been extremely impacted by the development of urban coasts for industrial and residential uses. When birds consistently lose safe nesting areas, it can impact their population numbers.
“If they are unsuccessful, year after year, in their reproduction efforts, you may actually be losing birds,” said Joanna Burger, a behavioral ecologist at Rutgers-New Brunswick. “An egret raises one chick instead of three for a number of years, and that overall decreases the population—even though the colony may still be there—because there are fewer and fewer young birds to enter the breeding population.”
These wading birds also face potential contamination of their food supply. They’re top predators—they’ll eat anything from fish, to crustaceans, to amphibians, to rodents. This also means they operate as important indicators of the health of the harbor.
“In 70 years, we have changed the environment along the Jersey Shore and along the Long Island shore,” said Burger. “That’s not a lot of time to have changed the environment for nesting birds that have lived along the coast for thousands of years.”
Herons only returned to the New York harbor islands after the passage of the 1977 Clean Water Act. Heavy metals can accumulate in the herons’ blood, eggs and feathers, adversely impacting their behavior, and alerting the ecologists who study them, like Burger, to the levels of contaminants in local waterways.
Today, metal contaminants are less of a concern as the levels of lead and cadmium found in these birds has steadily decreased over the last half-century, said Burger, largely due to new regulations placed on the use of these metals in paint and batteries.
Since the turn of the century, levels of mercury in birds have not markedly decreased in the same way, due to emissions from coal-burning power plants across the world. Mercury is a “global pollutant,” which means it can travel many miles through the atmosphere before being deposited on earth, often through rainfall.
In April, the Biden administration issued final revisions to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which could lower the amount of mercury emitted from power plants located in the United States.
“People might say that the effect from contaminants is small compared to the effect of [habitat] fragmentation or habitat loss,” said Burger. “And while that is true, it’s still important to reduce every adverse effect we can, because some of them we can’t.”
 A yellow-crowned heron takes care of its chicks on New York Harbor’s Governors Island. Credit: Courtesy of Bruce YoltonAccording to the bird alliance, these birds have been observed foraging as far north as Yonkers, 14 miles north of midtown Manhattan, to feed themselves and their chicks. When beaches, marshes and wetlands are developed for other uses, or lost to erosion, wading birds lose access to food.
In recent years, the New York City Parks Department, in partnership with the Natural Areas Conservancy, has spearheaded projects to restore marshes and wetlands along the city’s coastline, providing important foraging opportunities for wading birds, and nesting areas for migratory shorebirds.
Another urban coast, the New Jersey Meadowlands, the system of wetlands and marshes that border the Hackensack River, is located a couple miles west of New York City. Here, the black-crowned night heron, as well as the yellow-crowned night heron, have been observed since ecological restoration and conservation work began. In New Jersey, these bird species are classified as threatened, though not in New York, which Partridge laments.
According to Teresa Doss, the co-director and chief restoration scientist at the Meadowlands Research and Restoration Institute, three quarters of the Meadowlands’ 20,000 acres has been lost to development, much of which can be attributed to industrial and residential use and landfills.
 A juvenile yellow-crowned night heron is seen in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Credit: Courtesy of Mike Turso“We have all these areas that are filled in marshes, but they’re open spaces,” said Doss. “What we’re seeing is, when they’re just left alone, nature automatically just comes roaring back in. We’re looking to see how we can help assist with the recovery of these landfills and create habitat systems that can support a lot of migratory bird species.”
The Meadowlands Institute is looking at bringing in reef balls, artificial coral reefs, to support marine life while also limiting marsh erosion along the coast. Restoring and strengthening wetlands and marshes along the urban coast is not only of paramount importance for supporting nesting herons, which need elevation to survive storm surges, but also for the continuing human presence. Wetlands offer important flood protection for coastal communities, particularly as sea levels rise and rainfall increases due to climate change.
“When you think about the natural infrastructure that’s here, you think about the wetlands that filter the water, that attenuate flood flows,” said Doss. “You think of the forest and the grasslands, which can sequester carbon and help purify water and rain.”
The restoration of wading birds’ habitats also means further protection from flooding for coastal communities.
Urban coasts, even those with an extensive history of environmental degradation and commercial and industrial development, can still host an incredibly diverse array of migratory bird species. Though coastal communities are unlikely to relinquish their real estate to the birds that once nested and foraged freely along the Hudson estuaries, coexistence seems possible.
With expansive ecological restoration of the remaining available green spaces along the coast and in the bay, as well as by limiting human interference in wading birds’ nesting areas, these wild wading birds can continue their yearly pilgrimage to the city’s shores.
“If you picture the wild coasts of Maine, or the beaches of Cape Cod, or any of these wild areas in the northeast,” said Partridge. “To think that New York City has this wading bird population that they don’t have—this area where these high densities of wading birds are out there—to me, that’s kind of magical.”
Attacked on All Sides: Wading Birds Nest in New York’s Harbor Islands - Inside Climate News |
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| To: Snowshoe who wrote (2837) | 7/17/2024 6:16:20 PM | | From: Snowshoe | | | | The white raven has left Anchorage, but its many fans remain hopeful
adn.com
The white raven arrived sometime in October last year and quickly attained celebrity status. Paparazzi soon documented its every move. The bird even seemed to play to the cameras and was quite vocal.
But come April, there was silence. The bird left town along with most of the ravens that winter in Anchorage. The departure coincided with the arrival of raucous seagulls.
Wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott has studied these comings and goings. He says it’s normal for the birds to switch out, almost like they’re changing shifts. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it showed up again in mid to late October,” Sinnott said.
On the Anchorage White Raven Spottings Facebook page, many there are many posts from fans who hope this will happen. There’s already a countdown in anticipation of the bird’s return in October. But for now, that’s based on wishful thinking, not any scientific evidence.
18-Month White Raven Calendar $16.00
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| From: Brumar89 | 7/28/2024 11:57:26 AM | | | | | | Birds that migrate from Brazil to Seattle each summer face new threat
July 28, 2024 at 6:00 am Updated July 28, 2024 at 6:00 am
Cindy Barrett, right, and Abby Carter, 11, on a tour with Ballard Kayak & Paddleboard, check out purple martins seen in a nesting colony made up of natural gourds hanging from derelict wooden pilings on Shilshole Bay in Seattle on June 29. “These kayaks allow us to get into some places to see really unique wildlife... (Karen Ducey / The Seattle Times)More
By
Kate Perez
Seattle Times staff reporter
On the far west side of Ballard in Shilshole Bay — an area typically only accessible by boat, canoe or kayak — dozens of dark purple and blue birds swoop through a forest of decaying wooden poles. Others dive in and out of human-made bird houses from natural gourds that hang from the poles20 feet from the water’s surface.
These are the homes of the purple martin, a bird locals are fighting to protect as nesting areas on the Seattle waterfront become increasingly scarce.
The purple martin, North America’s largest swallow, has migrated to the West Coast from southeast Brazil for generations, arriving in the spring and typically leaving by the end of August. The state doesn’t keep an official tally of the bird’s population, but experts say at least 300 flock to Western Washington each year.The birds are attracted to the West Coast because of its long and warm summer days that allow them to hunt for food for longer periods of time.
A purple martin hangs out on a gourd in its nesting colony in Shilshole Bay in Seattle on July 18. Purple martins are a bird species that are not endangered, but their homes are being taken down throughout the Seattle area. (Karen Ducey / The Seattle Times)
They prefer to make their homes near water in dead trees and logs known as natural snags, or in cavities like woodpecker holes and other crevices in docks and the posts that support them, called pilings. These natural habitats have become harder and harder to come by, though: More and more of these docks and pilings are being removed by state, county and city agencies around the Seattle area, including at Elliott Bay.
Like the poles in Shilshole Bay, some of the pilings are encrusted with barnacles and seaweed. Many have been treated with toxic chemicals to preserve the wood against water decay. When they’re removed, so are the homes of these birds.
Now, a small group of local researchers is racing to protect and relocate the remaining habitat before more pilings are removed in August.
Thousands of purple martins “nested in natural snags and cavities, but then they started declining … as snags became scarcer and scarcer,” said Kimberle Stark, a King County Senior Water Quality Planner.
Natural snags started to disappear from Washington’s coast and near other U.S. waterways as natural forest and coastlines became commercialized and industrialized.
“There’s no natural snags anymore, so [the birds are] completely dependent on people putting up artificial houses,” Stark said.
A purple martin peeks out of a nesting box at another approaching bird at their colony on Shilshole Bay in June. (Karen Ducey / The Seattle Times)
Legacy carried on
Though they are not listed as an endangered species, the purple martin population is low in Washington and considered a Species of Greatest Conservation Need by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which means human intervention is necessary for the birds’ success.
A loss of habitat has long threatened purple martins’ ability to reproduce. So has a decrease in insects to hunt and eat due to an increase in pesticide use. The state population dropped so much throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s that a local environmental scientist named Kevin Li started building homes for the birds as a passion project in 1996.
Li is responsible for many of the gourds hanging throughout King County, homes that simulate the natural nesting cavity these birds prefer. After Li started stringing up gourds in Western Washington, the number of birds jumped from an estimated one nesting pair in Shilshole Bay in 1996 to about 32 nesting pairs along the Seattle shoreline, plus 74 more on Vashon Island in 2004. After Li died in 2006, his friends continued his mission.
Jean Power, King County Environmental Lab field science unit supervisor, has been involved with the purple martin habitat restoration efforts since before Li died. Power inherited the project after his death, she said, and now works with Stark and her husband, Carl Bevison, on the project.
“[The birds] suck you in,” Stark said. “Kevin was so passionate about them … You do become kind of obsessive about them.”
A purple martin nesting colony is seen on gourds and boxes on derelict pilings in Shilshole Bay in Seattle on July 18. Purple Martins are a bird species that are not endangered, but their homes are being... (Karen Ducey / The Seattle Times)More
With their high-pitched, flutelike chirps and dark blue wings, watching the purple martin can be captivating. When they fly, their wings look like silver stars. They often swoop and divebomb each other, squabbling before they return to their respective gourds.
Power and the others maintain many of the gourds. Bevis said he and Power climb on ladders each year in fall or winter and take down every gourd to clean and perform maintenance before the birds migrate back in May. The group also purchases new gourds yearly.
The total number of bird pairs is unknown, since there’s no concerted effort to track them across the state. But Stark estimates about 150 pairs migrate to the sites she and her colleagues maintain, including at spots in the lower Duwamish River, Shilshole Bay and Terminal 91 in Elliott Bay. Stark said this lack of tracking makes it difficult to know how many birds need homes. It also makes it tricky to get support from state agencies.
“It’s kind of unfortunate. They’re a vulnerable species,” Stark said. “There’s no monitoring, there’s no coordination.”
Kayakers paddle past a purple martin nesting colony made up of natural gourds hung from derelict wooden pilings on Shilshole Bay while on a tour of the Ballard Locks in Seattle in June. (Karen Ducey / The Seattle Times)
The biggest issue facing purple martins is a lack of natural habitat, Stark said. Purple martins prefer nesting in colonies in wide, open spaces where they can fly freely and catch insects to eat.
But docks and pilings across King County are increasingly being extracted, since many of these structures have been treated with creosote, a chemical used to preserve wood. The product is tough to break down and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, can remain as a tar-like mass in the water. It can also move into the soil and then to groundwater, resulting in dangerous creosote buildup in plants and animals.
Pilings have already been removed along Elliott Bay, and they will have to move gourds from Myrtle Edwards Park before extractions begin on Aug. 1, Stark said. When these pilings are removed from the area by government agencies, Stark and her team try to find nearby locations to relocate the gourds so the birds can find their homes from the previous year.
The Port of Seattle is actively partnering with Stark, her colleagues and other groups to relocate the gourds for purple martins to use in future seasons. Jenn Stebbings, Port of Seattle Habitat Restoration and Stewardship program manager, said the Port has worked with the group to relocate gourds at Terminal 91 close to their original locations.
The gourds now reside on tall, metal poles that are environmentally friendly.
The Port of Seattle has had to consider the trade-offs of removing pilings. |
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| From: Brumar89 | 8/16/2024 7:54:25 AM | | | | | |
A 7,100-Acre Solar Farm Is Slated for What’s Left of Wisconsin’s Best Prairie Chicken Habitat
A proposal to build the state's largest solar farm is getting pushback from both hunters and birdwatchers, who have until Friday to comment on the project
By Dac Collins
Posted on Aug 12, 2024 6:39 PM EDT
 Greater prairie chicken populations are down across Wisconsin. Wildlife managers counted only 248 male birds during the statewide spring survey in 2023. Photo by USFWS
An alliance of hunters, birdwatchers, and public land advocates in Wisconsin are pushing back against a massive solar project that’s being proposed in Portage County because of the impacts it could have on greater prairie chicken habitat and local hunting opportunities. These groups have stopped short of trying to block the project being proposed by Doral Renewables, which they say is essential in meeting Wisconsin’s long-term renewable energy goals. Instead, they are asking the state’s regulatory agency to scale down the project in a way that will better safeguard Wisconsin’s last remaining prairie chicken stronghold. The public comment period for the project closes Friday.
If completed in its current form, the 7,100-acre Vista Sands Solar project would be capable of producing around 1,300 megawatts of electricity, making it the largest solar project in Wisconsin by far. That’s enough to power roughly 200,000 homes, and it would be a significant step toward the state’s larger goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Doral’s vice president of development Jon Baker told Wisconsin Public Radio in July.
The area where the Vista Sands project stands to be built is ideal for vast arrays of solar panels. It’s a flat, sparsely populated, and mostly treeless landscape that is used predominantly for agriculture. But it’s these same qualities that also make the region one of the last best places for greater prairie chickens, a native grouse species that’s listed as threatened in Wisconsin and is on the decline throughout the greater Midwest.
The Buena Vista Wildlife Area covers more than 12,000 acres near the proposed development site and is home to two-thirds of the state’s overall prairie chicken population, according to the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation. The group filed as an intervener in the state’s ongoing approval process, which is being led by the Public Service Commission.
 A male prairie chicken dances on a lek. The birds require large open landscapes to breed and thrive.Photo by Brandon Jones / USFWS
“It’s treated similar to a lawsuit, with testimony, witnesses, and rebuttals. We just have a vested interest in this process and want to be engaged on a higher level,” WWF executive director Cody Kamrowski tells Outdoor Life. He says it’s the first time the group has gotten involved with the PSC. “We filed as an intervener because there wasn’t really another conservation group that was going to step up to the table and we were well suited for this position.”
Kamrowski makes it abundantly clear that WWF supports renewable energy development in Wisconsin, and that includes the Vista Sands solar project. He says the group and its supporters are simply asking the PSC to reduce the size of the project by 20 to 30 percent. This reduction would encompass buffers between the large solar arrays and the neighboring conservation lands that serve as lekking grounds for prairie chickens. Their concern is that the vast solar arrays being built — along with the accompanying fences, roads, and other infrastructure — will harm local populations of the birds, which require large open landscapes to breed and thrive.
Read Next: Can Wildlife and Clean Energy Coexist in the West?
Although more research is needed around the effects of renewable energy projects on prairie chickens, past studies have shown that the birds will go out of their way to avoid power lines, roads, and other signs of human development. Similar conversations are underway in the West regarding renewable energy projects and sage grouse, a species that’s closely related to prairie chickens that’s also extremely sensitive to human development.
“We’ve been getting beat up a little bit just because there are plenty of groups out there that are [pushing] renewable energy at all costs — regardless of what the local impacts are,” Kamrowski says. “That’s the really fine line that we’re trying to walk. We support renewable energy and solar, but we need to be mindful of localized wildlife impacts.”
Those impacts could (and likely would) extend to other species as well, he says. The Buena Vista Wildlife area and the surrounding public lands in Portage County are home to plenty of whitetails, wild turkeys, and coyotes, all of which provide opportunities for local hunters.
 The Buena Vista Wildlife Area also provides hunting opportunities for whitetail deer, wild turkeys, and predators.Photo by Jim Hudgins / USFWS
Kamrowski clarifies that the current proposal for Vista Sands does not include building on public land, and the majority of acreage slated for development is privately owned agricultural lands. (Under the current framework, farmers are offering their acreage to Doral as part of a lucrative 25-year lease.) Many of the large solar arrays, however, would be built on acreage that abuts the scatter work of conservation lands in Portage County where prairie chickens and other critters are known to live.
Kamrowski voices two primary concerns with such an arrangement: In addition to cutting off migration routes and pushing out wild birds and critters, Kamrowski worries sportsmen and -women might be less likely to hunt among sprawling arrays of solar panels.
“In hunter safety, they teach you to know your target and beyond, and if there are structures around instead of open farm fields, people aren’t going to be shooting in that direction,” Kamrowski explains. “So it does devalue the recreational value of that property to some degree.”
Hunters aren’t alone in pushing back on the size and scale of the solar project, either. Kamrowski says WWF has been supported as intervener by other conservation nonprofits such as the Dane County Conservation League and the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology — both of which have acquired and worked to protect some of the best remaining prairie chicken habitat in and around the Buena Vista Wildlife Area.
“That’s what’s really powerful about all this. You’ve got hunting groups, and then you’ve got non-consumptive birdwatching groups involved. That really speaks to the importance of this and the uniform message that everybody has.”
What’s Next for the ProjectIn July the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources released an Environmental Impact Statement for the Vista Sands Solar project. The DNR determined that the project, as currently proposed, could negatively impact the local prairie chicken population, and it gave recommendations for how the PSC should move forward on approval.
The DNR’s primary recommendation is to remove 10 of the proposed primary areas for solar arrays along with four alternate sites. The agency also asks regulators to consider alternate locations that would be less impactful to wildlife, since the company is currently leasing an additional 2,900 acres in the county that is not included in its current project footprint.
Kamrowski says the DNR’s recommendation lined up nicely with WWF’s own request to reduce the project’s footprint by around 20 to 30 percent and establish a buffer zone between the solar arrays and their associated infrastructure and neighboring conservation lands.
“We ended up doing a GIS analysis, and [the two] recommendations actually aligned perfectly … the DNR just did [their analysis] by solar arrays and not by miles,” Kamrowski says. “So we’ve just said we’re going to adopt the DNR’s recommendation just to keep it consistent between the two.”
Kamrowski says the PSC has until January 2025 to make a decision on the Vista Sands project. The agency is currently accepting public comment on the project, but that window closes Friday. ( Click here to comment.) He says there’s already been a flood of comments, but he hopes that more hunters will speak up and express their support for the DNR’s recommendation to scale down the project.
“It’s all about wildlife-responsible renewable energy siting,” Kamrowski says. “And I think we can find that balancing act.”
A Massive Solar Farm Is Slated for Wisconsin's Best Prairie Chicken Habitat (outdoorlife.com) |
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| From: Brumar89 | 8/20/2024 12:29:25 PM | | | | | | Seal Island sees record number of breeding puffins
By Derrick Z. Jackson
August 17, 2024
Elsewhere, there are reminders that seabirds in the Gulf of Maine remain highly vulnerable.
 Photo by Derrick Z. Jackson.
From a bird blind on Seal Island, I watched as puffins zoomed in from the sea with a rainbow of fish drooping from their beaks.
They carried copper and golden juvenile haddock, redfish and white hake. Others had pink krill from massive upwellings that created magenta blotches just offshore.
Some even carried bright silver herring: juicy fish that were once key prey for puffins in Maine. Atlantic herring are also a prime commodity for humans, who have overfished the species so badly that the fishery in New England has routinely been shut down early in recent years.
To see a number of puffins bringing herring to chicks was a stirring reminder of what the ocean can still offer.
  Photos by Derrick Z. Jackson.Seal Island, which sits 21 miles off Rockland, was once home to the largest Atlantic puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine. It is now managed by the Audubon Seabird Institute, and was the second island that Audubon’s Project Puffin restored puffins to after a century’s absence spurred by hunting in the late 1800s. The first was Eastern Egg Rock, six miles off Pemaquid Point.
Both islands were seeded with puffin chicks brought from Newfoundland. Puffins began breeding anew on Eastern Egg Rock in 1981 and Seal Island in 1992.
RELATED STORY: Off the coast of Maine, puffins are rebounding and feasting on a new snack
This summer, despite the long-term warming of the Gulf of Maine and long-term increase in the severity of weather events, conditions were so uneventful that Seal Island set a record for breeding puffins.
The crew of Coco Faber, Amiel Hopkins, Liv Ridley, Reed Robinson and Nacho Gutierrez counted 672 active puffin burrows, about 100 more than the last census five years ago. The total number of known burrows surpassed 1,000 for the first time.
 Photo by Derrick Z. Jackson.Other birds also did well. Razorbills, a larger cousin of the puffin, established a record 101 active burrows.
“The weights for the puffin chicks were just so good,” said Faber, 30, the crew supervisor. “Unlike many recent years when there were big shifts or drops in what puffin parents could find, this was a summer where they steadily found fish.”
That buoyant mood was shared on Matinicus Rock, another island 23 miles from Rockland, also managed by the Seabird Institute. Crew supervisor Tracey Faber, Coco’s sister, said that not only were the puffin chicks doing well, but Arctic tern and common tern nest numbers were up.
Common murres, another bird re-established in Maine after being gone for more than 100 years, fledged a record 16 chicks.
“We saw some great growth in some birds,” Tracey Faber said.
  Photos by Derrick Z. Jackson.But elsewhere there were reminders that seabird islands in the Gulf of Maine are highly vulnerable.
Earlier this month, researchers at the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group gathered at a conference hosted by the Seabird Institute in Bremen.
One topic was the damage caused by last winter’s violent storms, particularly on Petit Manan Island, which sits off a stretch of Downeast coastline that got hammered in January.
 Photo by Derrick Z. Jackson.Island supervisor Amanda McFarland and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Linda Welch said the vast majority of natural sod burrows under relatively small rocks and artificial nesting structures were destroyed.
The artificial structures had been built by Welch over the years to entice puffins to breed higher up on the island.
This winter’s obliteration left puffin parents competing for available space, with multiple eggs in the same burrow complex and parents trying to roll unwanted eggs out of the way — puffins hatch and raise only one chick at a time.
“There was a nest of a 30-year-old nesting pair that was shot down the shoreline 30 feet. We found burrow markers tossed all over the island,” said McFarland. “It was so ironic and sad because the food for the puffins was so good.”
 Photo by Derrick Z. Jackson.The island’s puffins saw one of their lowest birth rates in recent years.
“When I saw the damage, I almost started to cry,” Welch said. “We really need to think more than ever about taking a hard look at climate resilience for seabirds.”
Seal Island sees record number of breeding puffins (themainemonitor.org) |
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| From: Brumar89 | 9/1/2024 1:43:18 PM | | | | | | Meet the man behind Maine's puffin resurgence
Predators and human hunting had wiped puffins from islands off of Maine's coast. Dr. Stephen Kress had a wild idea to bring them back.
Author: Amanda Hill (NEWS CENTER Maine)
Published: 9:50 AM PDT August 30, 2024
Updated: 10:42 AM PDT August 30, 2024
ST GEORGE, Maine — Maine has a puffin population thanks to one determined researcher who hatched a plan more than 50 years ago. His idea was to take newly hatched puffins—also known as pufflings— from Newfoundland and bring them back to Eastern Egg Rock, an island off the coast of Maine where they had once lived, but over the years had been killed off by predators and humans.
It was a wild idea at the time, but Dr. Stephen Kress thought maybe if they grew up on the island they'd come back to it as adults and keep breeding.
Despite a successful regrowth now, more than 50 years later, it was a slow start to his so-called Project Puffin.
"After about the first four years when none of the puffins came back, I was starting to, you know, wonder for sure," Kress said.
Every summer for those first four years, Kress and a team of researchers planted themselves on Eastern Egg Rock along with a new batch of pufflings taken from Canada's population, kept them safe, and watched them fledge never knowing if they'd return to the island.
"And because normally puffins are colonial birds, it would take a very brave puffin to land on an island all by itself. So my thinking around that was to try to put some decoys on the island to give them the impression there were other puffins there and eventually, I even played recordings of puffins, and eventually, I also put mirrors up to give the puffins something to look at that would move," Kress said. "They did land almost immediately. We had our first sighting within days of putting up the decoys."
Suddenly, the project and Kress felt rejuvenated. It was working.
 
Credit: Richard Podolsky
Bill Bridgeland paints puffin decoys in 1975.
"It was super exciting because there had been so many critics and naysayers that said this was never going to work. It was a total miracle in my mind because what this meant was the chicks had learned, that rock was their home and they had—at least a few of them—had remembered that. There's thousands of islands in Maine alone so the puffins had to remember exactly how to get back to Egg Rock. So a few of them did, and that meant maybe more would, and that was the first sign of hope."
As one of the most successful rebuilds of a bird colony, Project Puffin hasn't just rekindled a population in Maine, Kress said Eastern Egg Rock and its surrounding islands have also become important training grounds.
"There's almost 1,000 young biologists that have been trained there at Eastern Egg Rock over the last 50 years and many of them are starting their own projects," Kress said. "Some of them have had careers of their own that were sparked by this experience, so that's kind of the new way I see Egg Rock and the other resort colonies on the coast to inspire the next generation of biologists."
More than five decades into this project, Kress said it's not only just the beginning of growing and supporting and learning from Maine's puffin population but also so much more.
"It's a new way of thinking about stewardship of the planet and how people have a responsibility to take care of life on Earth. We can't assume that nature will take care of all of these things because we have such a profound effect on the nature of this planet," he said.
Kress added that paying attention to how much plastic you're throwing away that will end up in the ocean, and how much carbon you're off-putting are simple ways to start helping.
Despite the incredible growth in the colony, without the teams of researchers who come back each summer, Kress says Maine's puffin population would easily be wiped out again by predators like peregrines, gulls, and eagles. So the project presses on. Kress is no longer involved, but he remains hopeful for its future.
"This hands-on active approach, that was the big surprise. And it worked so wonderfully that many other people are using these methods around the world. I know about 800 other projects in many countries helping about a third of the world's seabird species," Kress said. "And it's not just about the seabirds, these rich ocean spots at the seabirds are showing us, they're also important for fish, for sea turtles, for marine mammals, for all the wildlife that people care about—that they should be concerned about."
Here's the man responsible for Maine's puffin resurgence | abc10.com |
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