Puffins Return!

From Explore Birds:

Puffins have been spotted coming ashore on Seal Island. These black and white auks with the colorful orange bills have spent the winter spread out at sea, some quite far from Maine. Spring marks their homecoming back to Seal Island and the return of Explore.org’s 24/7 live cams giving you a view of the Puffin Loafing Ledge (with an all-new second Loafing Ledge cam) as well as an intimate invitation into a puffin family burrow. The cameras will go live in late May or early June.

The puffins arrived at Seal Island in early May and have spent weeks “rafting” or floating in large social groups on the open water for protection and fishing.  They’ve also kept busy on the water mating, most likely with the same partners each had in previous seasons.  Now on land they’ll soon lay their eggs, each nesting pair nurturing a single precious egg.

Atlantic puffins were once a common sight along the Maine coast. But in the 19th and early 20th centuries people collected their eggs and meat for food. This reduced the Maine puffin population to a single pair in the United States by 1901.

Wanting to combat this great loss, Dr. Stephen Kress of the National Audubon Society launched Project Puffin in 1973 to restore these marvelous seabirds to some of their former nesting islands along the Maine coast.  Today, the puffin colony on Seal Island numbers about 500 pairs.

Join us this spring and summer to witness close views of puffins. Take part in this successful conservation project by watching, commenting, interacting, and learning. As a Bird Cam Super Fan, you will be among the first to know when we have the puffin cam is in operation.