Puffins Coast to Coast
“Happy August!!???!?!?!”
That was the text I just sent my husband as the realization dawned on me that the two consummate summer months, June and July, are now pages in the 2025 history book. August has never quite captured my imagination in the same way the summer J-twins have, but I’m looking forward to a lowkey month.
This July has recaptured and reinspired my love for summer. Since moving to Oregon, summer has been a bit of a “hold your breath and brace for impact” season. Wildfires, personal losses, smoke, local water issues, and overall increasing climate anxiety have all been contributing factors. It wasn’t until out on a walk recently where one simple question invited joy back into the long summer days and short summer season–”Is it possible for me to love today?”
Getting out for an evening of photography with the birds is always a great way for me to love a day.
Now, that might seem a bit odd of a question. I first posed it to myself early in July when the average temperature was ten degrees above the average. That damn iPhone weather app informs me of this and it is an addictive, masochistic habit to look at it on hot days. There’s nothing practical I’ve found that I can do with this information, so what’s better than practicality? You guessed it–spiraling into a freefall with climate anxiety!
So, this simple and odd question has given me liberation from that twisted tradition. “Is it possible for me to love today?” and the answer is almost always “yes” if I dig deep. From there, I get a fun follow-up: “How can I best love today?”
That question is not as simple, but the first step I’ve found is noticing the beauty around me. The clouds, a warm summer breeze, the birds, a connection with a friend or stranger. There’s a lot to love.
And July proved that my heart can still swell 5x its size with not just one species of puffins, but two! These peculiar, adorable little birds have helped unlock a piece of my heart that I didn’t realize I had essentially closed for business: summer lovin’.
Let’s start with a puffin cruise off the coast of Maine, shall we? Before you board the boat, make sure you have adequate jackets with you (yes, jackets in summer! How wonderful) and that you are bringing aboard binoculars. I also packed my camera and telephoto lens just for this occasion. One thing we didn’t pack? Dramamine. My poor friend was the victim of some sea-rious sea sickness.
After about 40 minutes on the boat, we made it to our Main(e) destination: A research station on a small island a part of the Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge.
There were puffins in pairs, puffins floating atop the ocean, and puffins heading to shore. It’s not like they were everywhere you looked, but it was special bird time nonetheless. At the bow of the boat, it had me thinking, “Do I want to work here over the summers? What would life look like as a beginner ornithologist/wildlife biologist on an offshore island packed with puffins and other sea-faring birds?”
And then it hit me that it probably would not be as idyllic as what my preemptive mood board made it out to be. How could I know if it would be a good summer for puffins or a bad summer? We know that bird numbers across the board are falling drastically, and how would I handle such a trend, being in the trenches?
Probably not well. So instead, let’s take a look at just how MARVELOUS these creatures are and why it was so special to bear witness to their existence in person.
FACTS ABOUT ATLANTIC PUFFINS:
Atlantic Puffins can flap their wings up to 400 times per minute. I just timed myself and gave up at 60 flaps over 26 seconds and they weren’t very impressive arm flaps.
They are really really pretty.
The Atlantic Puffin is the official bird of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. And of my heart.
Love this little story from Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website: “A lighthouse keeper on Iceland’s Westman Islands has been banding puffin chicks for more than 60 years. The islands are home to the largest puffin colony in the world, and the keeper, Oskar Sigurdsson, earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for his prolific banding: more than 90,000 birds in that time, including more than 55,000 puffins.”
The oldest banded puffin lived to be 41 years old, but since that is just the oldest recorded that we have, it’s likely that they can live longer.
THEY ARE OFTEN SEEN PORTRAYED IN ART ON THE OREGON COAST AND IT IS MY GREATEST PET PEEVE!!!! Because seriously WHAT?! You walk down an Oregon Coast town and tourist shop and you see an “ATLANTIC” PUFFIN t-shirt in the window. I mean WHAT is THAT?! Do they have no shame? Did they just google “puffin” and smack the first thing they saw on the first thing they could sell? Sigh. My disappointment in our capitalistic-consumerist society will never cease, when we could be a curious and ecologically-focused species who don’t define our towns based on arbitrary lines but rather our relationship with our lands, watersheds, and creatures that call it home. For another blog post, I suppose…
Now, let’s fast forward a few weeks to the end of July and we’re headed to Cannon Beach, Oregon. That’s right–we’re talking Tufted, baby.
Tufted Puffins, that is.
FACTS ABOUT TUFTED PUFFINS:
They are itty bitty and only weigh about 1.5-1.9 lbs. Still larger than their East Coast counterparts, but still itty bitty. They are about 14-16 inches in length. Again, itty bitty facing those ocean waves!
They are burrowers and their nests can be up to 5 feet buried beneath the surface. Wow, I kinda want to be invited to a little puffin tea party in a cozy burrow with all the other wilderness friends…
They nest in colonies but also solitary pairs. I got to observe three hanging out together, with a fourth joining for a time. I’m not sure if the third was a nestling, but it looked about the same size as the other two. Pairs will do what is called “billing” where, you might have guessed, they rub their bills against each other. I also got to briefly observe that through my camera lens and it was in fact, absolutely adorable (adora-bill?).
Tufted Puffins open their wings to fly underwater when fishing, and outdive their other puffin pals by going as deep as 350 feet. THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FEET. These little dudes are barely over 1 foot in length! For perspective, the farthest free solo dive by a human was 702 feet with the use of a buoy and board. That depth was about 117 times their size. Tufted Puffins? They can dive 269 times their size.
Tufted puffins spend the winter months out at sea. You read that right. They migrate far offshore and eat, sleep, and lead a solitary existence out in the open ocean for 7-8 months. So mysterious and chic and hardcore.
FACTS ABOUT MYSELF:
Loving both of these birds.
Wishing them nothing but the very bird best.
I could spend hours, days, decades watching these little guys fly or float or frolic near their nests. (And omg…how cool would it be to see them underwater fishing?! #dreams)
Now that we’ve completed our birds section… time to move to the books! Well, book. And author shoutout.
Emily Henry, I owe you so many laughs, tears, deep joy, and moments that I’ve loved so tenderly. The gift that you are!
I’ve been on a journey of re-reading EmHen’s gems. On our Maine trip, I brought “Book Lovers” with me which was my very first Henry-read! If you’ve read any of her other books, you might be thinking, girl what about Happy Place?!?! Don’t get me wrong, that book was honestly part of the inspo for this trip in the first place, but I had actually just recently re-read it so I brought this comfort read along with me instead. I don’t have any deep insights or life lessons that I took away from this book, but I am taking the act of reading simply for the pleasure of reading with me from this experience. And cozy small towns with bookstores. And the humorous idea of Sasquatch porn, ifykyk.
And now for my BIG REVEAL of the art inspired by this trip…drum roll please…
Get it? It’s because I love puffins. And now my friends do too.
Thanks for reading and go look at some birds!!!