Long yellow eyebrows, chunky bodies, and bright orange beaks, the tufted puffin is easily the most charismatic bird off the Oregon coast.
With around 90% population decline in Oregon since 1998, the catastrophic loss has citizens and scientists alike bursting into action to save the iconic bird. Public education from groups such as the Haystack Rock Awareness Program, combined with locals’ passion, and scientific research, can help these birds back from the brink.
I remember my first trip to Cannon Beach. A family member was working with one of the volunteer groups. They had spotting scopes scattered around Haystack Rock and volunteers answering questions. Despite the choppy waves and biting wind, all the beachgoers were filled with excitement.
I took a step up and looked into the spotting scope, and there was … nothing. My uncle helped me adjust it, and among the mountains of seabirds, I saw a flash of orange. It was my first time seeing a puffin in person, and I was hooked. Now every year I go back to see them nesting.
Every spring, tufted puffins come in from their winters at sea to breed at Haystack Rock. They return to the same covered hovel, often with their lifelong mate, providing protection for them and their puffling.
Haystack Rock is a giant sea stack on Cannon Beach, standing at 235 feet. It serves as a home and nesting ground for common murres, several species of cormorants, rhinoceros auklets, and even peregrine falcons. Surrounding the rock is the intertidal zone, rich with a complex web of creatures.
“Should scientists someday find life on other worlds in far reaches of space, the alien beings they encounter will probably be no more bizarre than the creatures that populate the intertidal zone on planet Earth,” notes author and naturalist Stephen Grace on his Tides and Trails website.
Each animal on Cannon Beach, from tufted puffins to sea slugs, has its role. But as puffins seemingly vanish, what can be done to protect this precariously balanced ecosystem?
No one knows Cannon Beach better than the Haystack Rock Awareness program, or HRAP, a program funded by the city. Director Lisa Habecker walked me through a day in the life.
“We have an education and stewardship program that focuses on interactions with the public during low tide,” she said. The fragile ecosystem necessitates visitors to be gentle on some parts of the beach.
“We share knowledge about the nesting seabirds of the Oregon Islands Wildlife Refuge, and the intertidal animals of the state-protected marine garden,” she added.
The Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge spans the entire coast, protecting the wilderness islands whose cliffs provide perfect, secluded habitat for seabirds to mate. Habecker stresses the importance of education as the number one tool for the program’s work, in addition to dissuading beachgoers from causing harm, purposeful or not.
In general, the public is willing to learn. When the HRAP is out on the beach in their red vests and coats, lots of curious people will step up and see something new.
Nurse practitioner Amy Grace said, “I was a volunteer for the HRAP and not really into birds too much before that, but every day, setting up the spotting scopes, counting puffin nests, and showing them to excited visitors from all over the world (yes, the world) was really exciting.”
The people and visitors to Cannon Beach are not alone in their love of tufted puffins; scientists throughout their range work tirelessly to find explanations for all that is happening.
Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife scientist Tim Halloran worked researching the puffins at Cannon Beach for 14 years, retiring just last year. Halloran spoke about the puffin colony population at Haystack Rock.
“We’re below 100 now. And we, for a long time, were averaging about 120. So it’s gone down considerably,” he said, noting this concerning development for a species in decline.
Seabird population biologist Mark Hipfner explained that even as the puffin population disappears, the closely related rhinoceros auklets have remained stable.
Auks, such as the tufted puffin, have the highest wing loading of any bird, meaning that their wings are quite small compared to their body weight. Hipfner describes this as an “evolutionary compromise.” These birds are expending high amounts of energy in flight, but in return, they are essentially able to “fly” underwater. This unique trait is an easy way to identify auks.
“Being an [auk], flying is not their strong point, at least flying in the air,” explained Amy Grace. “Watching them leap off Haystack Rock and flap like mad is fairly fantastic.”
Their diet, composed of fish, requires them to dive deep. Powered by their wings, tufted puffins regularly dive to depths of 150 feet, but they have been observed to go as far as 360 feet under the sea surface.
As opposed to rhinoceros auklets, which are nocturnal, or active at night, tufted puffins are diurnal, meaning they are up during the day. Daytime activity makes them face additional challenges, such as competition and predation.
Seagulls, the little thieves, will do what they are known best for and try to steal food from the puffins. Puffins must then expend extra energy avoiding them while staying safe from predators.
Bald eagles in particular have become a problem for them. The conservation efforts for bald eagles have been massively effective, quadrupling their numbers since 2009; the downside is higher mortality from predation for puffins.
Halloran explained that the eagles at Cannon Beach are starting to perch on top of Haystack Rock for the first month or so at the beginning of breeding season. With a predator in the vicinity, the birds alter their behavior.
Colonies smaller than the one at Cannon Beach are more at risk, Hipfner explained.
“If an eagle is in the vicinity, the birds are all aware of it, and they’ll fly to the ocean, and the eagles can’t get them. But in these smaller colonies, there are not enough birds keeping their eyes open for eagles.”
This vulnerability has had a large impact on their behavior, causing the puffins to flee from the threat.
“It creates this whole sort of climate of fear. They feel like they need a critical mass in terms of the number of other puffins that they want to be, socializing because of the constant threat from bald eagles. I think that’s why the smaller colonies, especially in the southern portion of the range, are just blinking out,” Hipfner continued.
Predators are not the main source of population decline, that award goes to climate change.
As summers get hotter and oceans warm, climate change affects every living thing in the ecosystem. During heat waves puffins are going to prioritize their own survival. If it is too hot and they cannot meet their needs, they may abandon their nests and eggs.
Incubating and raising a chick in that climate takes a heavier energy toll than in regular years. Simply incubating the egg takes around 43 days, with another 38 to 59 days before the puffling leaves the nest. During the puffling’s development, parents take shifts flying back and forth to offer many feedings throughout the day, diving over and over to take from a smaller pool of fish.
Getting food in the first place can be an issue for these birds. Warming oceans affect the fish too.
“So there doesn’t really seem to be too much doubt that it’s related to food, it’s related to changing ocean conditions, and writ large it’s probably being driven by climate change,” Hipfner said of the decline.
Tufted puffins feed on several species of fish and other sea creatures such as squid. A large amount of their diet along the Oregon Coast, including but not limited to Pacific sand lance, surf smelt, and rockfish are in decline.These fish are at risk due to habitat loss or alteration, chemicals, and overfishing. It seems that all the issues tufted puffins face have come down more heavily on them in the southern part of their range.
Focusing back on Cannon Beach, Halloran said, “There’s been a lot more erosion on the colony, and a lot of that is because there are so many common murres.”
Common murres are the most common seabird to see nesting on Oregon shores.
“There’s a lot of them on all the terraces and rocks and ledges, wherever they can find a spot to sit, and they crowd in shoulder to shoulder for breeding,” Halloran said.
With such a dense population, parts of the rock are wearing away, leaving less and less room for the puffins to nest.
A recent research project of Hipfner’s, which isn’t yet published, has found a difference between the northern and southern populations of tufted puffins: “We completed a whole genome sequencing analysis on tufted puffins, and it turns out there is a genetic split.”
While the northern population has retained a larger number of birds, the southern population, such as those in Cannon Beach, has endured hemorrhaging loss.
The discovery of this split could prove crucial in getting southern tufted puffins listed under the Endangered Species Act, affording them more protections and providing extra funding for conservation efforts. Several years ago there was an attempt to get them listed, but partially due to that higher northern population, it was declined.
“But, you know, maybe that’s not really strictly true,” Hipfner said. “That would suggest that it’s something different about the puffins in the south versus the north and maybe we need to call them distinct population units.”
Listing this southern population could give these birds the chance they need to survive. Tufted puffins are currently an Oregon Conservation Strategy Species and are under the sensitive label. The Oregon Conservation Strategy is a state-wide conservation plan for all people in Oregon. It provides incentives and grants for landowners who restore and properly steward their land that contains strategy species and habitats. While this does provide some help to puffins, having a federal listing could provide them with much greater support.
When an animal gets listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has the power to implement conservation and action plans. This can sometimes involve captive breeding programs to increase population numbers, which has been successfully done with California condors, bringing their free-flying population from 22 to over 300.
While the puffin population in Oregon is at risk, it’s not too late to help. Each small action piling up could turn out to have major benefits. Habecker said decoys (a realistic fake) of tufted puffins are being put up in places where colonies used to nest, which could draw them back in.
People learning about tufted puffins and their issues, whether from the HRAP in Cannon Beach or the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, also brings more eyes to their needs. Also, research being done by people such as Hipfner helps others understand these issues on a deeper level.
To quote Hipfner, “They’re fabulous. They’re very charismatic. I think probably the most charismatic of the North Pacific seabirds.”
And he’s not alone. Habecker agrees: “To state the obvious, they are completely adorable.”
People have a passion for these magnetic birds. As they come in to breed after their cold winters at sea, so will people come into Cannon Beach to see them.
“I always recommend that people go out just at sunset,” Halloran said. “A few of them will come out and just sit outside of their burrows, or you may see some coming and going. And that’s a very pleasant time to be out there.”
