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birds
Seabird Conservation Is an Emotional Roller Coaster, But It's Worth the Ride
The Joy
A puffin catches a fish. (Photo by Derrick Jackson)
The joys were obvious. One was that, despite the Gulf of Maine overall being one of the fastest-warming bodies of ocean on Earth, it was a near-spectacular summer for puffins on Seal Island, a place legendary in the world of conservation. A part of the National Wildlife Refuge System and managed by the Audubon Seabird Institute, the island is part of the world’s first successful restoration of seabirds where humans killed them off.
Atlantic puffins were wiped out here and across several islands in Maine by the 1880s as coastal fishing and farming communities hunted them for their meat and eggs. Seal Island, a mile long, had hosted the then-largest-known puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine.
In my visit in mid-July, I often had between 100 and 200 puffins stretching across my view from my bird blind.
In the 1970s, Steve Kress, then an Audubon bird instructor in his late 20s, launched what became known as Project Puffin (and now known as the Seabird Institute). He brought hundreds of puffin chicks down from Newfoundland to hand raise on Eastern Egg Rock, a tiny 7-acre island, 6 miles off Pemaquid Point. Puffins began breeding anew on that island in 1981 and set a record 188 breeding pairs in 2019.
Kress repeated the experiment with hundreds more chicks on Seal Island, much farther out to the northeast. Puffins began breeding once more here in 1992. Last year, Faber and her team counted a record 672 active burrows.
“I’m very confident that there are more burrows,” said Faber, 31, who is the island supervisor and in her tenth summer with the Seabird Institute. “There are so many more that we have found since and burrows we might have missed because the chick fledged before we could get to them.”
You could not doubt her. In my visit in mid-July, I often had between 100 and 200 puffins stretching across my view from my bird blind. Puffin parents brought in a steady stream of juicy haddock, nice long sand lance, and even occasional herring to feed their chicks. Faber reported to fellow researchers on other islands that many Seal puffin chicks were “big and healthy.” Alcid cousins of puffins, black guillemots and razorbills, had their highest chick productivity ever.
If only all the birds the crew managed were so lucky.
The Angst
A tern delivers a fine meal of sand lance to a chick. (Photo by Derrick Jackson)
The same ocean that was a sea of plenty for puffins was more of paucity for Arctic, common, and roseate terns. They are species also restored across the Gulf of Maine by the Seabird Institute and the US Fish and Wildlife Service after decades of absence. They screech and dive to protect their chicks on the ground from gulls. By coincidence, that vigilance also offers protective cover for puffins down below.
Many species of terns were among the estimated 300 million birds slaughtered in the late 19th and early 20th century for feathers to adorn women’s hats. Public outcry led to the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The protections helped the tern population in Maine briefly rebound until the 1930s.
But the overall ecosystem was so upset by the prior massacres that terns were crowded off many islands by herring gulls and great black-backed gulls. Both species of gulls were also decimated in the feather trade. But being omnivores that feast both on bird chicks and garbage from landfills and fishing waste, their populations recovered much faster than terns and puffins, which feed solely on fish. Terns left Seal Island by mid-century, and the island became even more inhospitable as it became a Navy bombing range from the 1940s to the 1960s.
With the help of decoys, recorded tern calls, and gull control, 16 pairs of Arctic and 1 pair of common terns nested once more on Seal Island in 1989. By 2011, the colony grew to 3,038 pairs.
“Our observations of the terns show us how the impacts of climate change can cascade in interesting and often horrifying ways,” Faber said.
But the colony has shrunk steadily and dramatically since then. This summer, the island crew counted only 1,203 Arctic and common tern nests. That was the lowest combined census count since 1995.
The reasons are likely many. The last decade and a half has seen the warmest water temperatures ever recorded in the Gulf of Maine. When temperatures are particularly high, species of fish that terns snatch on the surface to feed chicks often flee too deep to be caught. Unlike puffins, razorbills, and guillemots, which can dive to hunt a variety of fish, terns feed only at the surface.
Then add the fact that terns are only in the Gulf of Maine from May to August. Common terns migrate as far south as Chile and Argentina. Arctic terns are the world’s longest-traveling migratory bird, breeding at the top of the Northern Hemisphere and wintering off Antarctica. Some Arctic terns hatched in Maine veer around South Africa into the Indian Ocean before joining other terns in the Weddell Sea.
Between their fall and spring migrations and the incessant flying for food, they can cover 55,000 miles in one year. In a lifetime, an Arctic tern, which can live past 30, could have made three round trips to the moon.
In its journey, a single tern can face a myriad of uncertainties from sea ice loss, overfishing, pollution, and coastal development. In recent years, many Arctic terns have returned to Seal Island in poor body condition. An international team of researchers found in a 2023 study that what might seem “minor changes” in conditions along the migration routes of Arctic terns may sum up to an effect that proves to be “greater than the parts.”
The Seal Island crew said they are already witnessing the compound effects. This year, as in several recent years, many Arctic terns arrived from spring migration in poor body condition. After an early tease of herring and hake, most of the food being brought to chicks by summer’s end was tiny crustaceans. In my blind stints, parent terns landed before me with a single krill, a dragonfly, a moth, or a tiny pufferfish.
And it could be even worse. This summer was relatively dry, but in years of both poor food supply and incessant rains, crews have told me there is no more helpless feeling than being holed up in their cabin and tents while weakened chicks are being soaked into fatal hypothermia.
It feels harder to get people to care when the nation is currently under a White House that is trying to weaken or gut the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and firing thousands of federal staff involved with conservation.
“Our observations of the terns show us how the impacts of climate change can cascade in interesting and often horrifying ways,” Faber said. She said low weight adults may lay smaller clutches of eggs, abandon nests early in the season or flush more easily from nests when gulls swoop down to try to eat eggs or chicks. Parents that get lucky and return to the island with a juicy fish for a chick are mugged in midair by other terns and gulls, often dropping a fish that no chick gets to eat.
Poor fish availability of course leads to poor growth of the chicks that survive and less chance of surviving during their first migration. “If the fish don’t last for the entire season, tern chicks that started out fat and grew quickly can still starve to death,” Faber said. “Adults are also more aggressive to neighboring chicks, sometimes to the point of killing them and chicks will pile onto each other if an adult does land with a fish.”
It makes it all the more celebratory when luckier chicks do survive and start flying around the island. The first sight of a chick fledging is often a cause for cheering and clapping. “I call it Tern TV,” said Dopulos, 24. “Sometimes it’s comedy, sometimes it’s tragedy.”
Price, 19, noting how hard parent terns work to find food for chicks, even to the point of bringing insects back, said, “They’re such fierce fighters. The funny thing is, with puffins, we don’t ever see most of the chicks under the rocks. We see the tern chicks every single day. It feels more personal.”
Ridley, 27, added, “To think that they go from little fluff balls to trying to fly in three weeks and then fly to Antarctica never stops being amazing.”
The crew said if people, who pack boat tours by the thousands each summer to admire puffins with their clownish orange, yellow and black bills and tuxedo-like plumage, really cared about that bird, they would also care about the challenges for terns.
Fortunately, terns did much better elsewhere in the Gulf of Maine as several islands racked up record numbers of common terns in 2022. But with seabirds in severe global decline, nothing can be taken for granted. Neither Arctic terns nor common terns are federally endangered, but Arctic terns are a threatened species in Maine as they “still far below historic levels.” Common terns are in decline in the Great Lakes.
Faber said it was “morally repugnant” to her that in a world where humans consider themselves the center of existence, that a “cute” species like puffins merits attention, while so many other creatures, like terns, are afterthoughts or ignored altogether. “I love the puffins,” she said. “They are the umbrella species for conservation. But terns are the umbrella species for puffins.”
The Anger
Puffins, once gone for nearly a century from several islands in Maine, are now a prime tourist draw. (Photo by Derrick Jackson)
And this is where the crew’s angst simmers into anger.
It feels harder to get people to care when the nation is currently under a White House that is trying to weaken or gut the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and firing thousands of federal staff involved with conservation.
“We get to escape from the darkest parts of the world,” she said. “I feel extra lucky to be here at this moment.”
The effects of the actions in DC earlier this year were acutely felt within the crew this summer. Dopulos had a job lined up this summer with the National Park Service. But it was cut by the Trump administration. She has several friends who lost their jobs in a service that has lost nearly a quarter of its permanent employees and left thousands of seasonal jobs unfilled.
“Some of them are still doing what they were doing to protect wildlife and resources, but as volunteers,” Dopulos said. “And they’re joining protests at the same time. They’re so passionate about what they do that they’re not going to let government get in the way. It’s a way of saying ‘We still persist.’”
The Gratitude
Holding a puffin is the Seal Island crew of (from left to right): Supervisor Coco Faber, Camilla Dopulos, Jack Eibel, Mark Price, and Liv Ridley. (Photo by Derrick Jackson)
For Dopulos and the crew, talking about persistence led back to a more joyful place. Even with the oft-dour drama of terns, they all said they were grateful for the privilege of living for three months of the year out of tents, tending to such an historic sanctuary.
“It’s my favorite place in the world,” said Ridley, who winters as a line cook in Idaho. “You get to live in a place that is not human dominated. Everywhere else, we manipulate the world. People think that the human way is the only way, but living in a society of seabirds proves to me daily that it isn’t. I feel lucky to have that perspective.”
Faber said Seal Island has become her own sanctuary. “We get to escape from the darkest parts of the world,” she said. “I feel extra lucky to be here at this moment.”
Feeling just as lucky was Steve Kress, who came out to Seal Island for a day while I was there. He and I have coauthored two books on his seabird restorations. Being much more remote than Eastern Egg Rock, Seal Island has never come close to receiving the press the pioneering island still receives. But while Egg Rock proved puffins could be brought back, Kress said Seal’s restoration, with three times more puffins, “makes me see the grand possibilities for restoration where there is such abundant, quality nesting habitat."
“When puffins first nested at Seal Island, we weren’t as overwhelmed and relieved as when the first pairs reclaimed Egg Rock. But the fact that similar methods led to the same outcome proved that we were on to something very important. It’s encouraging to find that given enough time, persistence, and patience, successful restoration projects can become the norm.”
What I’ve Learned from Chickens
There’s both good and sad to report from our years of living with hens. But we’re still at it and still learning.
What Motivates a Chicken?
One of the biggest payoffs of our hen hobby is the experience of living with alien creatures. Chickens aren’t much like dogs or cats. Birds have brains that are organized differently from mammalian brains, and birds see colors we can’t register. Chickens communicate vocally with about 25 different calls, screams, whines, cackles, purrs, and clucks. Janet and I spend a lot of time trying to understand what our hens are thinking and feeling, and we’ve learned a little about what motivates them.
Food is certainly at or near the top of the list. Chickens display extraordinary enthusiasm for food and are vigorously competitive whenever any treat is on offer. Their motto: Eat fast and ask questions later.
Reproduction sometimes takes top priority in the hen brain. We don’t keep roosters, since we live within city limits and an ordinance forbids them. Nevertheless, we have outlaw neighbors with roosters, and we are reminded daily that the male of the Gallus gallus domesticus species can indeed make a lot of noise. Roosters are required for fertile eggs, but in the absence of males, hens lay anyway. Some of our hens go broody occasionally, spending a couple of weeks sitting in their nest trying to incubate eggs that aren’t there, because we’ve collected them and put them in our refrigerator. Broody hens need special care, as they tend not to eat enough to keep themselves healthy. The hens often squat for us, as they would for a rooster wishing to copulate; when they do, we give them a backrub to partially fulfill their instinctive need—and to take advantage of a receptive moment when we can pet them or pick them up.
In 14 years, we have gotten to know 10 hens and can recall each one (Janet has painted individual portraits of most of them). We’ve witnessed sad deaths, but also beautiful lives.
Curiosity may be proverbially associated with cats, but we’ve found that chickens are perpetually inquisitive. They spend a large portion of each day exploring every corner of our yard, scratching in the dirt and digging holes. What’s down there? Who knows what might turn up?
Cleanliness requires effort. Sometimes chickens and other birds roll around in the dust as a way of discouraging mites and other pests (spa day!); afterward they shake their feathers in satisfaction. Feather maintenance is always a priority, and time must be devoted daily to preening. The versatile and sensitive beak must be cleaned occasionally by carefully wiping it on a hard surface (or our pants). Chickens and humans have very different ideas about cleanliness, but hens do care about it in their own way.
Affection might not be the strongest chicken motivator, but it certainly deserves to be listed. At first, we thought our chickens’ seeming enjoyment of human cuddles was merely a clever way of begging for more food treats. But long-term observation has shown us that some hens are just as affectionate as any dog or cat, and that food is not a strategic goal of cuddles. One of our hens, Lulu (more about her below) demands at least one cuddling session every day, and will sit in your lap for half an hour or more, soaking up love and offering all the hugs she can give, considering that she has wings rather than arms. Silvie is a cuddler too, but less demanding in that regard than Lulu. The hens’ affection for one another is a little more complicated, as we’re about to see.
Stella: avian elegance, on April 22, 2025. (Photo: Janet Barocco)
The Politics of Hens
Chickens are highly social creatures and instinctively establish a pecking order: One hen occasionally pecks others on the back of the head (often when everyone is eating) to show her dominance.
Lulu is at the top of the social ladder, and she’s a big, loud, confident hen. Friends have asked us whether chickens have individual personalities; the best answer is an introduction to Lulu. She is bossy around the other hens and demanding toward us. If she wants treats or cuddles, she lets us know by screaming—sometimes for minutes at a time—and, unfortunately, she’s as loud as any rooster. Being the top hen comes with perks, but duties as well. It’s up to Lulu to keep social order, watch for danger, and manage relations with the humans.
Stella and Sparrow—of rare designer breeds, while Lulu and Silvie are Orpingtons—are smaller, lower in the order, and relatively quieter and more skittish. Whenever Lulu is close by, they must be wary of a peck. But they’re not constantly bullied and seem to be happy, well-adjusted hens. They know the order and get their needs met within it. Sparrow is a cute comedian, always evoking chuckles from us humans. Stella is a self-reliant, industrious, elegant loner; she’s the smallest of our hens and has a scratchy voice but lays big pastel green eggs.
Some of our clearest insights into chicken social behavior come at dusk, as the hens enter their house and choose a spot on the perch. Who gets to sleep where, and next to whom? The lineup is different every night, and each night there are several tense minutes of jockeying. Sparrow seems to love snuggling up against big, fluffy Lulu, despite the prospect of a peck. Stella likes ascending the henhouse ladder last, and, though low in the hierarchy, usually gets her choice of sleeping spot. Always-agreeable Silvie (our vet called her “a very personable chicken”) just takes whatever space is available.
The whole gang: Stella, Lulu (front, naturally), Silvie, and Sparrow, on April 22, 2025. (Photo: Janet Barocco)
Generous Teachers
I’ve been astounded to learn the degree to which chicken evolution has been hijacked by humans. Genes matter, and for thousands of years people have been wittingly or unwittingly selecting chickens for humanly desirable traits.
Often, chickens pay a price. Humans want eggs; so, they breed hens that lay up to 300 of them a year—an astonishing feat. Laying an egg is no small matter. It literally takes a lot out of you. While wild relatives of the domestic chicken can live 20 years, most commercial hens live short lives, often (when they’re not killed for meat) perishing after 2 to 5 years. And while they’re pumping out those eggs, they can easily suffer from nutritional deficiencies and bone problems.
People have also bred chickens for size, feather and egg color, and behavior (I’ll refrain from discussing the commercial chicken meat industry, which has its own breeding priorities). Indeed, breeding has created more extreme varieties of chicken than of any other animal species except Canis lupus familiaris (dog). All our most affectionate hens have been Orpingtons of one sort or another: no accident, as most Orpingtons tend to be friendly.
Is it right for one species to interfere so much with the evolution of another? Not many humans seem interested in entertaining the question. One could conclude that chickens have benefitted from their relationship with people: Gallus gallus is by far the most numerous bird species (there are nearly 30 billion of them). So, humans have contributed to chickens’ evolutionary success. But that success depends entirely on chickens’ continued utility to a capricious ape whose overall activities are wrecking the biosphere. My advice: If you love feathered creatures, keeping chickens can teach you a lot about them, but you’ll do far more for this broad class of animals by creating or restoring habitat for wild birds.
In 14 years, we have gotten to know 10 hens and can recall each one (Janet has painted individual portraits of most of them). We’ve witnessed sad deaths, but also beautiful lives. Chickens are smart, emotional animals. They can decimate local insect populations, but they are resilient and courageous. They deserve our respect.
Oh, did I mention the poop? There’s lots of it. Everywhere. Every day. It’s good for the compost pile and the garden.
Recommended reading:
Andrew Lawler, Why the Chicken Crossed the World
Sy Montgomery, What the Chicken Knows
Melissa Coughey, How to Speak Chicken
Theodore Xenophon Barber, The Human Nature of Birds
Gail Damerow, Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens
Page Smith and Charles Daniel, The Chicken Book
Alice Walker, The Chicken Chronicles
Joseph Barber, The Chicken: A Natural History
Clea Danaan, The Way of the Hen: Zen and the Art of Raising Chickens
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