By Joe Pinchot
HERMITAGE — This definitely is a project for the birds.
Hermitage students in grades kindergarten through four have been studying birds, collecting money to help with puffin restoration efforts, and participated in an Earth Fest celebration that included a talk by the man behind Project Puffin.
“This is great,” said Dr. Steve Kress between Earth Fest events Tuesday. “This teacher ... this is so outstanding.”
Hermitage environmental coordinator Nancy Bires met Kress last summer during a National Audobon Society workshop in Maine, and wanted to bring his example to her students: One person can make a difference.
Puffins are small birds, somewhat like penguins, although they can fly and have much cuter faces. They live on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and once flourished off the coast of Maine, but were killed off for their feathers, which adorned ladies hats.
“By 1900, there were only one pair of puffins left in Maine,” Ms. Bires told students.
Shortly afterward, the Maine puffin colony had perished.
Kress developed a program to bring the puffin back to Maine, called Project Puffin.
The plan had to deal with conditions that naturally hurt puffin procreation — gulls and minks love puffin lunches, and puffins lay only one egg a season — and those that had arisen since the puffins flew the coop.
With the permission of the Canadian government, Kress and his helpers snagged puffin chicks — they look like gray and white fur balls with beaks — and transported them to Eastern Egg Rock, Maine. They hand fed the babies and protected them until they were old enough to jump into the Atlantic for adult pursuits. The Puffineers hoped the babies would remember Eastern Egg Rock and return to nest.
This was 1974.
“No puffins for four years, until the first puffin came back,” said Kress, director of the Audobon Society’s seabird restoration program and vice president for bird conservation. “And I had to wait eight years for the next one to come back.”
But after 1982, a regular puffin nesting colony developed, and the Puffineers spread their effort to two other islands.
The group used decoys and mirrors to entice puffins to at least give the island a look, and human intervention has been a key.
“To keep gulls and other predators off the islands we discovered we have to put college students on the islands in the summer,” Kress said. “I can tell you it’s working.”
Last year, Eastern Egg Rock hosted 101 nesting pairs, and the other two nesting sites have had better numbers, for a total of 1,000 nesting pairs.
“After 35 years of doing this project, we are very happy with the success so far,” Kress said.
The Puffineers are monitoring the effects of global warming on the puffin colonies.
They have already seen the warming of the oceans decrease the fish population around the puffin islands — puffins eat fish — and are trying to convince puffins to nest on the highest parts of the islands to escape rising sea levels, Kress said. “So far, our puffins are doing OK,” he said.
Prior to Project Puffin, there had never been an effort to reintroduce sea birds, Kress said. The techniques developed to restore puffins have been used with order coastal birds in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Japanese scientists are using Project Puffin techniques to create new nesting sites for the short-tailed albatross, which had limited its nesting sites to a single volcanic island. One eruption could have wiped out the species forever, Kress said.
Kress told the students they can help preserve bird species in their own yards by hanging and filling bird feeders and planting shrubs.
“This is about much more than puffins,” Kress said. “This is about taking care of the earth.”
Kira Burkhauser sang a puffin rap for Kress, five fourth-graders participated in a puffin calling contest, and all the students sported hats, head dresses, drawings and masks of birds, from puffins and bald eagles to blue-footed boobies and peacocks.
They and sang songs such as Ms. Bires’ “The Puffin Song” and “This Pretty Planet.”
The students are collecting Abraham Lincolns for Pennies for the Planet, the Audobon Society’s campaign to raise money for Project Puffin and other efforts to support species restoration and habitat protection.
Information: www.projectpuffin.org and www.penniesfortheplanet.org
