![]() The project’s supporters began to question whether they would ever succeed – but Kress was determined. “They would come out when they were six weeks old and they would work their way to the edge of the island and swim off,” says Kress.įor four years, none of the birds returned to the island to breed. The team hand-reared puffins in artificial burrows, feeding them vitamin-enriched fish twice a day. The pufflings were transported by boat, motor vehicle, a small charter plane, another vehicle, another boat and then a rowboat to get ashore on Eastern Egg Rock. Starting in 1973, the team collected chicks from Great Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, which had a healthy puffin population. Getting the puffin chicks to the island was no easy task. He hoped they would return there to nest, after going out to sea. Kress had a theory that if the Project Puffin team could transplant puffin chicks – also known as pufflings – to Eastern Egg Rock and hand rear them, the birds would create a mental map of the island’s location. It was home to a puffin colony before hunters arrived in the 19th century. #Puffin birds freeThe tiny island, accessible only by rowboat, is ideal puffin habitat – free from predators and edged with granite boulders under which the puffins nest. Project Puffin’s origins lie on an uninhabited seven-acre island, six miles off the coast of Maine, called Eastern Egg Rock. What’s more, the techniques Kress developed to save puffins are now used by seabird conservationists around the world. ![]() Thanks to his pioneering methods, Project Puffin says there are now around 1,300 pairs of puffins nesting on islands in the Gulf of Maine. Kress ran the project while working for the National Audubon Society, a major bird conservation nonprofit in the United States. Kress’s fascination grew into Project Puffin, a decades-long effort to bring the puffin back to Maine. Kress decided to learn more about these “special birds.” Puffins can dive to depths of over 100 feet in the sea and fly through the air at 50 miles an hour, while on land they are adept at scampering over boulders and digging holes. Project Puffin founder Stephen Kress on his way to Eastern Egg Rock, where he's been working with puffins since 1973. ![]()
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