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by Olya Milenkaya
While many college students around the country are spending their summer waiting tables and selling clothes, I opted for a different experience — conservation biology.
The Gulf of Maine and many of its islands were once home to healthy populations of seabirds. Hunting, habitat loss, and the introduction of non-native predators by people drove these birds to become endangered or extinct from Maine. Today, students, scientists, and activists are bringing them back.
This summer, I am working for the National Audubon Society’s Project Puffin. The project began 30 years ago with the reintroduction of Atlantic puffin chicks to Easter Egg Rock in Muscongus Bay, about six miles off the coast of Maine. Puffins had nested there until the early 1880s. Now, Easter Egg Rock is one of several islands managed by Audubon, and the restoration program has expanded over the decades, with efforts focusing not only on the puffin, but on Arctic, common, and roseate terns as well.
As a research assistant for Project Puffin, I am living and working on three different islands for 12 weeks. Each island varies drastically in its habitat and history. While on Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge, I lived with five others on a 100-acre island 22 miles from shore, formerly used by the Navy as a bombing range. We shared the island with thousands of common and Arctic terns, hundreds of puffins, as well as razorbills, common murres, cormorants, common eiders, black guillemots, one peregrine falcon, and hundreds of other migratory bird species (not to mention all the seals).
As I write this, I am currently on the five-acre Outer Green Island, only a few miles from Portland, Maine, looking after 200 common terns. This island is too far south for most of the alcidae (web-footed diving seabirds such as auks, puffins, guillemots, murres, etc.) but is a temporary home to hundreds of migrants.
While on these islands, I am assisting with several long-term and widespread studies. Even though we are keeping data on all birds, as well as weather patterns, our priorities are the puffins and terns. As part of a metapopulation study, adult terns are captured, measured, weighed, banded, and released. We also re-site some birds to keep track of individuals and their movements year after year. We are conducting feeding studies in which we monitor the species and size of prey that adults are feeding their chicks. And we are following the productivity of a tern colony by determining how many chicks fledge out of the number of eggs laid.
Terns and puffins are remarkable birds. Both are colonial, monogamous, and long-lived, spanning up to 26 and 30 years respectively. Puffins live most of their lives out at sea, only coming on land during the summer mating season. There, they prefer to nest in the same location year after year, digging a burrow and laying one egg.
While sharing these islands with the puffins, we monitor active burrows and their breeding success. And as with the terns, we conduct feeding studies to determine the diet of chicks and health of the fishery.
As I write this from the Gulf of Maine, gaining a wealth of field experience — not to mention a decent tanline — I am grateful to the organization that introduced me to nonprofits and environmentalism in action. Thanks [Bay Area Action and] Acterra!
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Audubon’s Seabird Institute
seabirdinstitute.audubon.org
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Olya Milenkaya was intern leader of BAA’s High Schools Group in 1999–2000 and paid coordinator in 2001. She is now a senior at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, pursuing a degree in Environmental Studies.
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Originally published 26-Jul-2003 in the EcoAdvocate.
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