Late tonight, while you’re in bed, a baby puffin will step out of the burrow he’s called home for the past two months and awkwardly shuffle through the darkness toward the water. When he reaches the ocean, he will swim away and won’t touch land again for five years.
The puffling — that’s what baby puffins are called, pufflings — has spent the past 45 days dining on whatever fish his parents have placed on his doorstep. After tonight, he’s on his own. He departs his burrow in darkness to avoid his most dangerous predator, the great black-backed gull. These are the largest gulls in the world, and they would easily snatch and swallow a puffling caught out in the open.
As the pufflings leave their nests, the puffin season slowly comes to a close. Biologists on the five islands that make up the Atlantic puffin’s breeding range in the Gulf of Maine are packing up their gear and heading for the mainland. Some adult puffins will mill around the island for a little longer, but they also will be gone soon. The puffin tour boats are finishing up. I was on the final Isle au Haut Ferry cruise to Seal lsland last Sunday. I’ll be on the Bar Harbor Whale Watch boat tomorrow when it makes its last visit to see puffins on Petit Manan Island. Farther up the coast, Captain Andy Patterson of Bold Coast Tours has completed his last trip to Machias Seal Island for the season.
Puffins are alcids, a bird family that prefers ocean to land. Their cousins, the razorbills and common murres, left these same islands weeks ago. On my first Seal Island trip in May, there were hundreds of razorbills mixed in with the puffins. Last Sunday, there wasn’t a single one.
Razorbills leave earlier, but the fathers continue to care for chicks in the sea for weeks, until Junior is sufficiently developed and skilled enough to fish on his own. While pufflings generally head out solo for open ocean, baby razorbills often stay close to shore, where Daddy can forage in the tidal surges that rip through shallow areas.
With puffin-watching season over, coastal birders turn their attention to a different part of the Gulf of Maine. There are spots, not too far offshore, where underwater ridges push tides toward the surface, carrying fish with them. With whimsical names like the East Bumps, the West Bumps and the Ballpark, these upwellings are feeding stations for whales. Here, too, you’ll find Atlantic white-sided dolphins and gray seals preying on the small fish. Most importantly, you’ll also find an astonishing number of ocean-going birds.
Several things are going on. Some of our Maine-breeding bird species are out there, mostly herring gulls and great black-backed gulls. Many northerly breeders have finished nesting near the Arctic, and have headed down to Maine for the feast. Other birds from the South Atlantic have escaped their winter, flying north to enjoy Maine’s all-you-can eat seafood buffet. Finally, some marauders from both hemispheres have found their way into the Gulf, where they bully the other birds and steal their meals.
From the north, there are red and red-necked phalaropes in big flocks, flashing around all the other birds, cartwheeling in loops and circles. Northern gannets plunge-dive near them. A few northern fulmars are present.
Thousands of great shearwaters have made their way north from their tropical breeding colonies in Tristan da Cunha. This small group of islands is often called “the most remote place on earth,” located far out in the South Atlantic between Africa and South America. Sooty shearwaters fly up from the coast of Argentina, as do Wilson’s storm-petrels. These small, swallow-like birds are contenders for the title, “most abundant bird on earth.”
Then come the hunters. Parasitic and pomarine jaegers are powerful, gull-sized bullies that harass other birds, trying to get them to drop their meals. More rarely, great and south polar skuas appear. The great skua is a northern hemisphere breeder, while its cousin nests along the Antarctic coastline.
Many of these bird names sound like gibberish to landlubbers. Don’t panic. You don’t need to know or recognize any of them. Just know that they’re out there, and the best way to see them is to go on a whale watch. Bar Harbor Whale Watch is my favorite. From its deck, I see many birds and a few bonus whales. Maine Audubon takes over the boat Saturday, Sept. 15. For an absolutely overwhelming experience, be on it.
Bob Duchesne serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley Chapter. He developed the Maine Birding Trail, with information at mainebirdingtrail.com. He can be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.
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