Up Close with Puffins

Steve Kress holds an Atlantic Puffin about to be released on Eastern Egg Rock in Maine. This puffin was just banded with a uniquely numbered U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service band and a field-readable band to easily distinguish it from other puffins.

Bill Scholtz

Steve Kress is Audubon’s vice-president for Bird Conservation, and founder and director of the Audubon Seabird Restoration Program. He has authored many books, including The Audubon Guide to Attracting Birds, Project Puffin: How We Brought the Puffins Back to Egg Rock, and Saving Birds. For the past 30 years, he has taught the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s popular Spring Field Ornithology course.

What was your most thrilling encounter with a bird?

The sighting of the first puffin to return to Eastern Egg Rock on June 12, 1977. That was two years after I’d released that individual bird, and four years after I’d released the first puffin on Eastern Egg Rock. I was so thrilled that I raced in my boat back eight miles to the mainland, got my camera and a colleague, and raced back to get a picture. It was sitting in the same spot where I’d left it.

What does a puffin feel like in the hand?

They don’t feel like they look. They’re rugged little survivors, more like footballs than anything fluffy or puffy. And their wings are so strong you can barely hold them in. That big, round-looking breast is really the muscles that power the wings. The beak is like a nutcracker with a hook on the end. If you get your finger too close, they will sink it into you and shake their head vigorously. They’ve also got very sharp claws which they dig in the ground with, so you have to be careful not to get raked by them.

What advice do you have for new birders?

Spend time outside, and watch birds after you identify them. Lists are fun, but they’re not the end. There are a lot of new things to be discovered about even the most common birds, which you can learn if you just keep watching. There’s a lot of joy under the surface.

If you could be a bird, what kind would you choose?

After watching puffins for so long it would be interesting to actually be inside of one. I think I’d enjoy a puffin’s life. They have a lot of things going for them—a long life, and some have very solid relationships with their mates. They live in a beautiful part of the world in the summer. In the winter we don’t know where they go, so if I were one, I’d learn more about that, too.

Learn more about puffins and see nest cam photos at www.projectpuffin.org.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu