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EASTERN EGG ROCK — The cute and comical seabirds called puffins have returned to several Maine islands and are finding plenty of food for their young chicks unlike last summer when many starved.

Last year, young puffins died at an alarming rate because of a shortage of herring, leaving adults to try to feed their chicks fish that were too big to swallow.

Steve Kress with the National Audubon Society’s seabird restoration program says chicks this summer are getting plenty of herring and hake. But researchers are still concerned because fewer birds have returned, meaning many of them likely died.

A PUFFIN LOOKS AROUND after emerging from its burrow on Eastern Egg Rock off the Maine coast.
A PUFFIN LOOKS AROUND after emerging from its burrow on Eastern Egg Rock off the Maine coast.
Kress reintroduced the first puffins in 1973 from Canada’s Newfoundland. The program was so successful it’s been emulated elsewhere with other bird species.








FIELD BIOLOGISTS row to shore from a moored boat at Eastern Egg Rock, a small island five miles off the Maine coast. Bird blinds used for monitoring puffins stand above the waterline at right.
FIELD BIOLOGISTS row to shore from a moored boat at Eastern Egg Rock, a small island five miles off the Maine coast. Bird blinds used for monitoring puffins stand above the waterline at right.
 
 
DR. STEVE KRESS walks through tall vegetation on Eastern Egg Rock, a 7- acre island where he led the successful effort to recolonize puffins off the Maine coast. Forty years ago, Kress and his team of researchers began transplanting puffin chicks from Newfoundland to man-made burrows on the remote island in Muscongus Bay.
DR. STEVE KRESS walks through tall vegetation on Eastern Egg Rock, a 7- acre island where he led the successful effort to recolonize puffins off the Maine coast. Forty years ago, Kress and his team of researchers began transplanting puffin chicks from Newfoundland to man-made burrows on the remote island in Muscongus Bay.
A PUFFIN walks next to a decoy of a razor-billed auk on Eastern Egg Rock off the Maine coast. Decoys help attract nesting birds to the island.
A PUFFIN walks next to a decoy of a razor-billed auk on Eastern Egg Rock off the Maine coast. Decoys help attract nesting birds to the island.

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