WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Puffins of Eastern Egg Rock

It is a trip that Bridget and I have been itching to take for years! A ride out to Eastern Egg Rock to see the puffins of Maine! We boarded the Hardy Boat 3 which left from New Harbor late in the day towards evening.

"Good evening folks and welcome aboard the Hardy 3. My name is Captain Ron."

We are interested in seeing the puffins, ...Well, because they are so darn cute. But also because the success of the puffin restoration project, led to the success of the restoration of the tern population on Lake Champlain.

I asked Naturalist Bridget Butler about the Puffin Project.

"So, the puffins were gone for awhile, and now they are back?"

"Yes, for quite some time, and it wasn't until the 1970s that they were brought back, and it's one of the first seabird restoration projects that's been successful."

Steve Kress, the founder of Project Puffin started looking at the social interactions of puffins and wondered if he could convince the few puffins chicks that be brought here, that there were several more around and that this was once again a great place to raise their young. He started by placing decoys on the island, then added some mirrors and sound effects and it's has become such a successful strategy, it's being used all over the world now. It's the same strategy what has been used to bring the Common Terns back to Lake Champlain.

"Yes it is. Common terns which is an endangered bird on Lake Champlain, we're using the same kind of strategies there, Audubon Vermont is using decoys to bring the terns back."

Today, there are more than 100 nesting pair of puffins on Eastern Egg Rock, each pair only produces one chick.

Puffins are small birds, only about 10-12 inches tall, and weighing about a pound,. their colors and body shape almost cartoon like. They have to run a few steps on the top of the water, before they can take off!

Summer is when the puffins raise their young. With the kids back on the rock, the adult puffins spend the day out at sea fishing, and return towards evening to socialize on the rocks, bob around on the water and hang out before turning into their burrows for the night.

They sure look comfortable on the water, able to use their wings in the air as well as underwater. In fact these birds spend most of their lives well out at sea, and only come back to the island to reproduce.

Now, that they have been successfully reintroduced back to the Maine coast, the puffins will return to the island by mid to late April, and then they will begin to migrate back out to the open water by late August.

"It's a rainbow! The perfect day!"