If you want to see seabirds, August is your month
EASTERN EGG ROCK, ME - JUNE 11: Eastern Egg Rock is home to the world's first restored Atlantic Puffin colony. The 7-acre island located in outer Muscongus Bay, 6 miles east of New Harbor is home for 4-5 staff members of Audubon Project Puffin from mid-May through mid-August. A puffin makes its way to a burrow on Eastern Egg Rock in 2018. (Derek Davis/Staff Photographer)
We get a lot of questions from both Mainers and visiting naturalists about the best times and places to see seabirds, so we’ll try to give you a timely overview here.
The cold waters of the Gulf of Maine provide a bounty of food for many seabirds, both those nesting and those just visiting for the summer. You are probably aware of this thanks to Maine being the only state where you can find the charismatic nesting Atlantic puffin, but there are a handful of other birds benefiting from the nutrient rich waters off our shores.
We’ll focus on pelagic species, those that only come to land to nest. Why not start with the aforementioned Atlantic puffin? These clown-faced little birds return to their nesting islands after spending the winter far offshore, typically showing up in May. They’ve spent the summer finding a mate, laying eggs in a burrow, and as we move into August, you can expect most of the chicks to be fledging. I love keeping an eye online at Project Puffin’s “Puffin Burrow Cam” where, as of July 28, a puffin chick on Seal Island (way off the coast of Vinalhaven) was about to fledge. If you’ve been planning on taking a puffin cruise this summer, I’d get out there ASAP (Hardy Boat in New Harbor, and Cap’n Fish’s Cruises in Boothbay Harbor offer puffin tours).
This has been a remarkable summer for other members of the alcid family, which includes puffins, guillemots, razorbills and murres. Maine is the southernmost breeding point for most of these seabirds, with much larger colonies across the north Atlantic, but razorbills extended their range southward this year with the first confirmed breeding at Eastern Egg Rock, a small island in Muscongus Bay. This site is famous for the reintroduction of puffins, with their first nesting dating back to 1981, but this is a 35-mile leap for razorbills, with their next closest nesting on Matinicus Rock, an island much farther out in the Gulf of Maine, just past Matinicus Island. On July 1, I was an instructor for the Hog Island teen camp, Mountains to Sea, and we took a morning boat trip out to Eastern Egg Rock and were lucky to spot one of the razorbill adults carrying food onto the island.
There are some alcids that don’t breed in the Gulf of Maine but do winter here, mainly thick-billed murre and dovekie. These two are primarily arctic nesters, though thick-billed murres can be found nesting off some Canadian Maritime Provinces. Summer records were virtually unheard of in the Gulf of Maine, with just single records of each in eBird (Cornell’s online database of bird sightings) prior to this year. Both have made surprising appearances this summer. A single dovekie in breeding plumage was spotted at Eastern Egg Rock on June 15, and at least nine thick-billed murres have been reported since June 1. It is hard to know at this point what is causing these birds to linger this summer, but many seabirds move in response to food availability, or lack thereof.
The warmer waters of August are when we tend to see peak numbers of many of the non-breeding seabirds that come to our waters. Many of our shearwaters, like great and sooty shearwaters, are southern hemisphere breeders, so they nest during our winter (the austral summer) and then spend their “winter” in the Gulf of Maine, during our summer. We are increasingly seeing more “warm-water” species like Cory’s shearwaters coming into the gulf.
I’ll wrap up by making a plug for a new boat trip we are offering on Aug. 16 out of Bar Harbor, partnering with FLUKES: International Whale Tours to spend a day on a 112-foot jet-powered catamaran—a fast and smooth platform for spotting seabirds and whales. We’ll motor into the waters off Brier Island (Nova Scotia) and to Lurcher Shoals, one of the most promising places for abundance and diversity of marine life that is rarely visited. Join us and see what the Gulf of Maine has to offer!
Thanks to all of you who joined the live Q&A on July 22. Remember, you can always ask questions: send them to [email protected].
Have you got a nature or wildlife question? It doesn’t have to be about birds! Email questions to [email protected] visitmaineaudubon.orgto learn more about birding, native plants, and programs and events focusing on Maine wildlife and habitat. Maine Audubon Staff Naturalist Doug Hitchcox and other naturalists lead free bird walks on Thursday mornings starting at 8 am, at Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm Audubon Sanctuary in Falmouth.
Copy the Story Link
