night calls gutting golf courses...september-october 2013 fall birding trails | night calls |...

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2013

FALL BIRDING TRAILS | NIGHT CALLS | GUTTING GOLF COURSES

MODEL OF SUCCESSHOW PROJECT PUFFIN IS SAVING SEABIRDSACROSS THE WORLD

AUD_SEPTOCT2013_CVRSUBV1.pgs 07.30.2013 21:38 PDFX1a_T

2 Audubon September-October 2013

E More, including exclusive content: audubonmagazine.org.

30 Innovation Follow the LeaderForty years ago Steve Kress's groundbreaking ideas about seabird restoration were greeted with skepticism. Today those methods have protected nearly 50 species in 14 countries and become the go-to conservation approach.By Bruce Barcott/Photography by John Huba

36 Birds Dust BusterA remote California lake, turned into a near wasteland by a long-ago water grab, is reconstructed on the strength of an unusual cooperative effort. Among the benefi cia-ries: thousands of migrating birds. By Jane Braxton Little/Photography by Rosalie Winard

42 Technology A Little Night MusicScientists are using top-of-the-line acoustic gear to listen to the enormous fl ocks of birds that migrate at night, out of sight. What they hear could be a key to the birds' future. By T. Edward Nickens

50 Climate Change Out of SyncAs the Arctic gets dramatically warmer, ornithologists are rushing to understand what effects the changes will have on the millions of songbirds that visit the region each year. By Amanda Mascarelli

ContentsSeptember-October 2013

Volume 115, Number 5

Cover: Steve Kress and

one of the puffi n decoys

he used to revolutionize

seabird restoration. Photo

by John Huba

This page: A male Lapland

longspur. How will this and

other songbird species

fare in their fast-changing

Arctic breeding grounds?

Photo by Gerrit Vyn

4 Editor's Note

6 Audubon in ActionDavid Yarnold on birds and climate change; the 2013 State of the Birds report: a focus on private-land conservation; visiting Capitol Hill to lobby for seabirds; more.

10 Inbox

15 Field NotesA renewable-energy rush off New England; the Amazon produces 15 new bird species; a major decision looms on Isle Royale; murrelets bounce back when rats disappear; more.

20 Travel 8 Great Fall Birding TrailsTop-notch birdwatching at more great birding trails, from New Jersey to Wisconsin and Washington State.By Kenn Kaufman/Illustration by Noah Woods

22 Dispatch Run Its CourseA silver lining of the Great Recession? Conservationists are turning golf courses into nature preserves and parks. By Susan Cosier/Photograph by Charles Lindsay

24 Incite Towing the LineThe U.S. fl eet knows how to longline without reeling in a deadly bycatch of seabirds and other non-target species. If Congress will only get onboard, we can export these practices to the rest of the world. By Ted Williams

64 The Illustrated Aviary California QuailReimagining the bird art of John James Audubon. Illustration by Marc Burckhardt

AUD_SEPTOCT2013_P2V1.pgs 07.31.2013 17:32 PDFX1a_T

Focal length: 18mm Exposure: F/8 1/1000 sec ISO200 Aperture priority mode

www.tamron-usa.com

Focal length: 270mm Exposure: F/8 1/800 sec ISO200 Aperture priority mode

Tamron has garnered international acclaim for its

lenses, including seven consecutive EISA awards, one of the industry’s most

prestigious awards.

© L

es V

oorh

is

Just one lens for every moment.

You’re not just taking pictures — you’re creating memories. The versatile Tamron

15X all-in-one 18-270mm lens effortlessly zooms from wide to telephoto so you’re

able to capture all of your favorite people, places, and things without changing

lenses. Just 3.8 inches long and weighing an ultra light 15.9 ounces, the compact

lens is as easy to carry as it is to use. Vibration Compensation (VC) technology

eliminates camera shake, while the Piezo Drive ensures faster, quieter precision

autofocus. Don’t get frustrated with a basic kit lens when you’re trying to get closer

to the important subjects in your life. Just one lens. For all life’s moments.

(Model B008) For Canon, Nikon and Sony* DSLRs.

*Sony mount does not include VC as stabilization is built into the Sony camera body.

NOW AT A NEW LOW PRICE! Just $449

The love of birds comes in many forms. For Donal C. O’Brien Jr., a former National Audubon board chair, a big part goes back to his world-class collection of duck decoys. Hunters have used these lifelike objects to attract the real things for generations. Donal had the prescience to ac-quire them through trade or at bargain prices before they achieved valuable folk status. He and Steve Kress also had the foresight to turn decoys on their heads, using them to save a species rather than almost wiping it out.

More than 40 years ago, Donal, a master carver, fashioned his very fi rst set of puffi n decoys, one of which is featured on this issue’s cover and another in the photo below. As Bruce Barcott recounts in “Follow the Leader” (page 30), Kress, the head of Project Puffi n, decided to deploy them to lure other mem-bers of the species back to their former breeding site off the Maine coast. After Steve’s research assis-tant at the time, Kathleen Blanchard, painted them, everyone hoped for the best. Then one day a puf-fi n returned and nuzzled its bill against a decoy. “It took years,” Donal recently told me. “I also carved Arctic terns and razorbill auks for Steve. They were defi nitely better decoys. But the idea really worked all over the world.” Indeed the restoration techniques Steve and his Project Puffi n pioneered are being used to protect 47 seabird species in 14 different countries.

Birders revel in the spring and fall migrations of millions of birds. Scientists are now eavesdropping on these migrants, using revolutionary technology to make forecasts on a continental scale few could have even dreamed of a few years ago. “This is making the invisible visible,” one researcher told Eddie Nickens in “A Little Night Music” (page 42). The researchers are using what they learn to make the skies safer for birds. And a safer world for birds is a happier one for the thousands of people fl ocking to the birding trails Kenn Kaufman knows fi rsthand, from Wash-ington State to New Jersey (“8 Great Fall Birding Trails,” page 20).

Finally, I wonder how the patron saint of bird art might regard our new department, “The Illustrated Aviary,” closing our magazine (page 64). “I’ve never met an illustrator who wasn’t inspired by John James Audubon’s art,” says design director Kevin Fisher. Each issue, Kevin assigns a different illustrator to reconceive a particular species from Audubon’s Birds of North America. The latest, a California quail by Marc Burckhardt, presents its subject in a contemporary setting much different than Audubon would have recognized, but one he would have surely understood. ([email protected])


ESee what's new online at audubonmagazine.org.

Editor’s Note BY DAVID SEIDEMAN

Audubon Online Here's just a taste of the great content you can fi nd at audubonmagazine.org.

MultimediaSee more remark-

able photographs of

dust-blown Owens

Lake and its thriving

birdlife.

ConservationWin a copy of The

World’s Rarest Birds,

a book that high-

lights endangered,

often unknown, birds.

BirdsGet a bird’s-eye

view of American

oystercatchers as

scientists track their

migration this fall.

NatureA family password

helps fairy-wrens

feed their offspring,

not the cuckoos that

sneak into their nests. FRO

M T

OP:

KIM

HU

BBA

RD; D

ERRI

CK

Z. J

AC

KSO

N. B

OTT

OM

, FRO

M R

IGH

T: W

ALK

ER G

OLD

ER; R

OSA

LIE

WIN

ARD

; MIC

HA

EL H

OO

PER/

FLIC

KR C

REAT

IVE

CO

MM

ON

S

Vice President, Content Mark Jannot

Editor-in-Chief David Seideman

Managing Editor Jerry Goodbody Features Editor Rene Ebersole Articles Editor Alisa Opar Senior Editor Susan CosierAssociate Editor Michele BergerSenior Columnist Ted WilliamsField Editor Kenn Kaufman Reporters Kate Baggaley, Emma Bryce, Geoffrey GillerContributing Editors Douglas Brinkley, Frank Graham Jr., Connie Isbell, Jane Braxton Little, Susan McGrath, T. Edward Nickens, David Allen Sibley, Scott Weidensaul, Barry Yeoman

Design Director Kevin Fisher Photography Editor Lila GarnettArt Assistant Mike Fernandez Photography Assistant Natasha Otrakji

Director of Production & Operations Heidi DeVos212-979-3138 [email protected]

Publisher Patrick J. O'Donnell 212-979-3176 [email protected] Director Susan Loredo 212-979-3101 [email protected] Manager Anna Duffy 212-979-3145 [email protected]

Advertising Sales RepresentativesNew York Sales Offi ce:Direct Response/Offi ce Manager Linette Santiago 212-979-3102 [email protected] England: Lange Media Sales Eric Lange 781-642-0400 [email protected] (Travel Only): Compass MediaDustin Gontarski 251-967-7560 [email protected], Caribbean, South America, and Southeast (non-travel): Maria E. Coyne, Inc.Maria E. Coyne 305-756-1086 [email protected] Donna Falcone 561-620-3093 [email protected]: Zoeller Media Sales, Inc. Kevin Zoeller 312-782-8855 [email protected] Costin 847-658-6451 [email protected]: Hutch Looney & AssociatesHutch Looney 818-990-9000, ext. 222 [email protected] Perrin 818-990-9000, ext. 227 [email protected]: York Media Services John Magner 416-598-0101; [email protected]

Customer service: 800-274-4201; [email protected]

The observations and opinions expressed in Audubon magazine are those of the respective authors and should not be interpreted as representing the offi cial views of the National Audubon Society. Volume 115, Number 5, September-October 2013. Audubon, ISSN 0097-7136, the magazine of the National Audubon Society, will be published six times in 2013 (January, March, May, July, September, November). Editorial and advertising offi ces: 225 Varick Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10014; 212-979-3000. Audubon does not accept unsolicited artwork or manuscripts and is not responsible for their return. Reprint permissions: [email protected]; 212-979-3188 (fax). Copyright © 2013 the National Audubon Society. No part of the contents of this magazine may be reproduced by any means without the writ-ten consent of Audubon. Address correspondence concerning subscriptions and/or membership to the National Audubon Society, Membership Data Center, P.O. Box 422249, Palm Coast, FL 32142-2249; call 800-274-4201; or email: [email protected]. Membership: $35 a year. Canada, $45 a year. Other foreign, $50 a year. For Maine Audubon membership services ONLY, please call 207-781-2330 or write 20 Gilsland Farm Road, Falmouth, ME 04105. Postmaster: Send address changes to National Audubon Society, P.O. Box 422249, Palm Coast, FL 32142-2249. Periodical preferred postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offi ces. Canadian GST Number is R127073195. Canada Post International Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 190314. Printed in USA.

Audubon


Southern CharmS m o o t h W a t e r

N

ATLANTICOCEAN

St. Simons Island

Sapelo Island

Charleston

Beaufort

Savannah

Hilton Head Island

Jekyll Island

Amelia Island

Jacksonville

SOUTHCAROLINA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

www.americancruiselines.com Small Ship Cruising Done Perfectly™

Reservations offi ce open 7 days a week

Call toll-free 1-866-227-3920

Cruise the protected Intracoastal Waterway

T e historic cities of the Southeast United States are linked by a network of rivers and bays known as the Intracoastal Waterway. Experience Southern charm at its f nest on an 8-day cruise to the iconic cities of Charleston, Savannah, and Jekyll Island. You will receive the f nest of everything aboard your 100-guest small ship as we explore the beauty and diverse wildlife of the magnif cent Old South.

INN

OV

ATI

ON

FOLLOW THE LEADERSteve Kress discovered that decoys were key to luring Atlantic puffi ns, extremely social birds, back to their historic breeding grounds on rocky islands off of the coast of Maine. The “clowns of the sea” can live more than 30 years and don’t breed until they’re three to six years old.


Ornithologist Steve Kress’s crazy idea to bring back Atlantic puffi ns worked, and today his once-controversial methods are the gold standard for saving seabirds around the world. BY BRUCE BARCOTT/PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN HUBA



Every visit to Eastern Egg Rock Island, six miles off the coast of Maine, is like coming home for Steve Kress, a soft-spoken man of 67. Forty years ago, as a young Audubon bird life instruc-tor, he hatched the idea of reviving the Atlantic puffi n colonies that fl ourished on this seven-acre island before hunters wiped them out in the 1880s. Years of trial and error ultimately led to the reestablishment of puffi ns—now 2,000 strong on three protected islands, including Egg Rock—and to the creation of Project Puffi n, an Audubon program that today manages North Atlantic breeding colonies of American oystercatchers, Arctic terns, and 14 other seabird species, on seven Maine islands.

Maine gave birth to Kress’s ideas, but during the past 30 years the discoveries and techniques pioneered by Project Puf-fi n have driven a new science of seabird restoration and con-servation. In that time nearly 60 projects worldwide have used Kress’s “social attraction” techniques to move dozens of seabird populations to safer nesting grounds (see “The Power of At-traction,” page 34). Decoys simulating specifi c species and am-plifi ed birdcalls signal that the new location is desirable and secure. Moving very young chicks from an old colony to a new one can help the birds imprint, encouraging their return to the safer island when it’s time to come in from sea and establish their own broods.

Those strategies have set the standard everywhere. They helped save the Bermuda petrel, whose nests were threatened by storms and rising sea level. Between 2004 and 2008 scien-tists translocated 105 petrel chicks to a 15-acre wildlife sanc-tuary on higher ground, and by 2012, 15 pairs were breeding there. On Japan’s Torishima Island, a colony of short-tailed al-batrosses, one of the most threatened birds on earth, was nest-ing on the rim of an active volcano. Using decoys and audio recordings, biologists fi rst lured adults away from the rim, and then moved chicks to a safer nearby island. Comparable proj-ects have built new colonies of diving petrels in New Zealand, double-crested cormorants in Oregon, and Ascension Island frigatebirds in the equatorial South Atlantic.

“There aren’t many of us who can look at our lives and say we made a real difference to the planet,” says Scott Weiden-saul, author of the bird migration classic Living on the Wind. “Steve is one of them.”

F our decades after bringing the fi rst puffi n chicks to Egg Rock, Kress hasn’t slowed down. Now director of Audubon’s Seabird Restoration Program, he’s still ex-

perimenting with new ideas.“I’m anxious to see how the carpets are working out,” he

says on a trip to Egg Rock. Four interns live all summer on the island, guarding the nests of puffi ns, common terns, Arctic terns, laughing gulls, and storm petrels. Fast-growing mustard weeds threaten the tern nests (“Terns can’t fi nd their chicks in it,” he explains), so Kress laid down a few strips of rock-colored carpet to prevent the vegetation from grow-ing. He wants to see if the terns can success-fully nest on the artifi cial surface.

That kind of ingenuity has marked Project Puffi n from its beginnings. The puffi n recov-ery story is often told as a tale of unqualifi ed success. But as Kress unspools the details of his 40-year career, it’s apparent that acceptance of his approach was hard won—born of Kress’s ability to push against the norm and exercise the courage to fail, learn, fail again, and ulti-mately succeed. Over the years his example

has fostered a robust culture of debate and trial and error.“The autonomy we have to exercise scientifi c thought and

try new ideas—that’s what keeps us coming back,” says Emily Pollom. For the past two summers Pollom, a 27-year-old biolo-gist, has co-managed common, Arctic, and least tern colonies with her fi ancé, biologist John Gorey, 29, on Stratton Island, also off the Maine coast. “If I call in [to the Project Puffi n offi ce in Bremen, Maine] and say to Steve or Paula Shannon, the seabird sanctuary manager, ‘Hey, we’ve noticed the common terns like to do this with the tidal wrack. What if we put some wrack on the carpets?’, they’ll think it over and say, ‘Sure, give it a try.’ ”

It’s hard to imagine, but 40 years ago conventional wisdom held that seabirds shouldn’t be helped at all.

I n the early 1970s the ruling theory held that humans should let nature take its course. If that meant scavengers like gulls and raccoons crowded out other species, then so be it. “I didn’t buy that,” Kress recalls. The problem was, humans had already interfered and tilted

the playing fi eld. Herring and black-backed gulls had taken over islands like Egg Rock because fi shermen and hunters had killed all the puffi ns and terns. Gulls fl ourished by fattening up on lobster bait and open-air garbage dumps, not because they were winning any “balance of nature” battle.

By the early 1970s puffi ns had vanished, though their hab-itat was still there. So were the fi sh. Puffi ns feed their young a heavy diet of juvenile white hake, which are the perfect size and shape to slip down a chick’s gullet whole.

Ornithologists knew that puffi ns breed at the same sites where they are raised, and that the young alcids go to sea for two to three years before returning to their fl edging grounds to mate. Kress’s plan was to move 10-day-old chicks from Great Island, Newfoundland—then host to more than 160,000 Fratercula arctica nests—to Egg Rock before they imprinted on the Cana-dian island. The homing instinct is strong in puffi ns and many other seabirds. Once they fl edge, it’s diffi cult to convince them to nest anywhere other than their natal grounds. Translocating adults wouldn’t do any good—no matter how desirable the new habitat, they’d always fl y back to their birth site.

It took four years and the intercession of an early sup-porter, William H. Drury, research director of Massachusetts Audubon, before the Canadian government gave Kress per-mission to take six chicks.

With the help of nature enthusiast and Intel cofounder Robert Noyce, another early supporter, Kress and research assistant Kathleen Blanchard moved the chicks in juice cans to be hand-reared on Hog Island and then released on Egg Rock. They hand-fed the chicks hake stuffed with vitamins. When the chicks fl edged, Kress says, he never saw them leave. “They always head off to sea in the middle of the night.” Puf-fi ns spend most of their lives on the open Atlantic, resting on

the water and diving as deep as 100 feet for fi sh. (Their range remained unknown until Kress and colleagues attached a geolocator to a bird hatched on Maine’s Seal Island in 2009. “Cabot,” named after the explorer John Cabot, roamed over the western At-lantic, from the Labrador Sea all the way to waters near Bermuda.)

Kress and his team translocated more and more chicks in the following years—in all, 954 between 1973 and 1986. For the fi rst four years, no birds returned to Egg Rock.

Puffi ns began nuzzling up to the wooden birds, “bill-ing” them (rubbing bills as a sign of affection) and even attempting to mate with them.

INN

OV

AT

ION

EOnline: To learn more about Project Puffi n, visit projectpuffi n.audubon.org.


Kress realized the island, with bare rocks and no birds, didn’t look very appealing. Puffi ns are highly social. They enjoy one another’s company and view the presence of other puffi ns at a particular site as a security blanket. An old National Geographic article sparked an idea. Puffi n hunters in Iceland, where the birds are common, attracted their prey by propping up dead puffi ns to lure live ones into range. So in the spring of 1977 Kress put out carved decoys on Egg Rock.

The idea worked. That June two-year-old puffi ns returned and began nuzzling up to the wooden birds, “billing” them (rubbing bills as a sign of affection) and even attempting to mate with them.

Still, none of the puffi ns reproduced for four long years. Then on July 4, 1981, Kress’s team spotted a puffi n returning to Egg Rock with a beak full of fi sh. Since adults swallow their prey underwater, it signaled a hungry chick on a nest. The tiny band on the adult’s leg confi rmed its place of origin. “It was one of ours,” Kress says.

That year, four nesting pairs raised chicks. The colony pla-teaued at 15 pairs for about a decade, then continued to grow, stabilizing at more than 100 nesting pairs today.

K ress fi nishes his story just as we reach Egg Rock’s sandless coast. Maggie Lee Post, 26, the island supervisor, rows out to greet us in an infl atable skiff.

“Watch your step,” she tells me. “A lot of birds are nesting on the rocks and in the grass next to the trail.” She points to an Arc-tic tern egg on bare rock, marked by a small blue fl ag. Overhead

a cloud of agitated terns and laughing gulls announce our presence. “You might be dive-bombed a little,” she warns. We follow Post up the trail, surrounded by shrieking terns.

Kress and I head off to one of the is-land’s 11 bird blinds. “When we fi rst came out here we were extremely careful not to disturb the birds,” he says. “But now we know our visible presence actually helps to keep predators away.”

As we wait for puffi ns to appear, Kress points to numbers painted onto the shoreline rocks, granite fractured into fl at table boul-

ders by winter ice and tossed haphazardly into stacks. “Each of those is a puffi n burrow, and they go down quite a ways, like an apartment building,” he says. “A mated pair will return to the same one year after year.”

Eventually a lone puffi n appears just offshore, furiously fl apping its stubby little wings. “Those wings are a compro-mise,” Kress says. “He needs to fl y underwater, too.” The bird lands next to a puffi n decoy perched on a rock. Then another live bird joins it. And another. Five more land.

“See the grooves on the bill?” Kress says. “They’re like rings on a tree. The older the bird, the more grooved the bill.” And they can get pretty gnarled; it’s not uncommon for a puffi n to live 20 years or more. One old-timer on Egg Rock is 35.

Puffi ns launch themselves into fl ight from rocky cliff s along the coast. Their takeoff s and landings look awkward, but the birds are expert swimmers and divers, using their wings to propel them deep underwater, where they catch fi sh in the frigid depths.

Using decoys and audio recordings, biologists fi rst lured short-tailed albatrosses away from the volcano rim, and then moved chicks to a safer nearby island.


The puffi ns are smaller than I’d expected. They’re a bit like miniature penguins, 10 inches high, tuxedoed and plump. And they’re exceedingly cute.

“The charisma of the puffi n,” says Pete Salmansohn, Project Puffi n’s education coordinator. “That’s what brought the media, and what drew volunteers and donors.” In the 1970s a feature spot on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom inspired a young Susan Schubel. A decade later, as a University of New Hampshire graduate, she volunteered to live in tents on Maine’s outer is-

lands. As a result of her 13 years with Project Puffi n, Schubel now consults as a seabird audio engineer on international res-toration projects. Last year, for example, she designed a system that broadcast double-crested cormorant calls to lure the birds to Oakland’s new Bay Bridge, because their perches on the old bridge rafters are scheduled for demolition in 2015. It’s a tech-nology Kress fi rst developed to attract common, roseate, and Arctic terns to Maine islands. (Puffi ns are visually oriented; terns respond more strongly to acoustic safety signals.)


IN

NO

VA

TIO

N

30-40 20-29 10-19 5-9 1-4

Baja California, Mexico

This new project, started in2012 by the Audubon SeabirdRestoration Program and itspartners, is attracting brownpelicans, Cassin’s auklets,ashy storm-petrels, andGuadalupe murrelets to anumber of islands off thePacific coast of Baja, whereinvasive species wiped outa vast number of seabirds.

Eastern Egg Rock, Maine, USA

The pioneering seabird restorationproject began in 1973 and was thefirst to use decoys to attract seabirdsback to a historical nesting site. Theisland now hosts more than 100nesting pairs of Atlantic puffins and,as of 2012, 817 pairs of common terns,57 pairs of Arctic terns, and 71 pairsof roseate terns.

Nonsuch Island, Bermuda

Storms and rising sea levelon crumbling islets in CastleHarbor threatened the cahow,Bermuda’s national bird. By2013 Bermuda officials,working with Audubon, hadestablished a colony of 15breeding pairs and 18hatched chicks on nearbyNonsuch Island.

East Sand Island, Oregon, USA

An entire colony of 9,000breeding pairs of Caspian ternswas lured away from Rice Island,in the Columbia River estuary,to East Sand Island, where theyposed less of a threat toendangered populations ofsalmon smolts.

THE POWER OF ATTRACTIONForty years ago, when Steve Kress hatched the idea of bringing back Atlantic puffi ns to a former breeding site in Maine, experienced seabird biologists shook their heads. Kress proved them wrong, and today the restoration methods he and his Project Puffi n developed have become common practice. More than 47 seabird species have been protected in 100 locales in 14 countries across the world.

TECHNIQUESChick Translocation Moving chicks to a new location. This method is preferred for species

that imprint on their natal site and return to the place they fl edged from to breed; that don’t require care after they head to sea; or for projects without a nearby existing colony.

DecoysTo give the appearance of an existing colony in a new site, researchers

deploy models of adults, chicks, and eggs.

Acoustic playback Many birds, such as terns, are attracted to the calls of their kin. Playing recorded

calls—alone or in combination with decoys and chick translocation—attracts new breeders. The technique is used with both diurnal and nocturnal species.

Mirrors To give the appearance of a larger colony and of movement within a site, mirrors are

sometimes added to project areas that have decoys.

Carpets Terns on Egg Rock were unable to fi nd their nests as weeds grew over their breeding

grounds, so Kress and colleagues put down strips of rock-colored outdoor carpet. It’s been a hit with the terns and, so far, largely impenetrable to problem plants such as mustard.

NUMBER OF PROJECTS

Map by Peter and Maria Hoey


Audubon 35September-October 2013

Project Puffi n’s infl uence began to reverberate in the early 1980s, when word of its accomplishments inspired other trans-location programs. “The work on Egg Rock showed us that the strong homing instinct of long-lived seabirds could be over-come,” recalls Colin Miskelly, a biologist who during the past 20 years has led dozens of translocation projects in New Zea-land for species from common diving petrels to lizards.

Kress’s techniques have been passed along largely by for-mer interns—there are more than 500 of them from 18 coun-

tries—by word of mouth, and in scientifi c journals. In their next phase, Kress and his colleagues envision a formalized ap-proach to seabird restoration education. They would like to bring young professionals from around the globe to the Audu-bon Seabird Institute they will establish at the Hog Island Audubon Camp. The scientists would do 10-week intern-ships, during which they would receive training in methods for restoring nesting seabird populations on islands.

continued on page 60

Mana Island, New Zealand

Invasive species and agriculturedecimated Mana’s population ofcommon diving petrels, whichare such strong flyers that theycan shoot through the crests ofwaves. Today between 10 and 18pairs of the birds nest on theisland each year.

Torishima Island, Japan

Many of Japan’s short-tailedalbatrosses nest on the rimof an active volcano onTorishima Island. Biologistsenticed a number of thebirds off the rim, andestablished another colony,located a safe distance fromthe volcano, that now hostsmore than 120 nesting pairs.

Jiushan Archipelago, China

The Chinese crested tern is one of the world’smost endangered seabirds, with fewer than50 individuals remaining in the South ChinaSea. In 2013 Chinese biologists plan toencourage the terns to establish a colony ona safe island sanctuary.

Ascension Island,Equatorial South Atlantic

House cats wiped out this island’s20 million seabirds after they wereintroduced in the early 19th century,with only a few frigatebirdssurviving on a small rocky outcrop.After removing all cats andemploying attraction techniques,in 2012 researchers discovered anesting pair on the island for thefirst time since Charles Darwinvisited more than 150 years earlier.



P eople sometimes ask Kress about his exit strategy: At what point do you declare Project Puffi n a vic-

tory and walk away? He thought about that a lot in his early years.

“If people were ever going to exit Egg Rock and turn it back to nature, we had to fi nd a balance, some way to protect the puffi ns against predators,” he says. “I thought the answer would be the terns.”

Puffi ns and terns tolerate each other as nesting neighbors, and common terns are notoriously tough defenders, often fl ocking together to attack predators like black-backed gulls, which prey upon puf-fi ns. Puffi ns are swimmers not fi ghters, so they reap great benefi t from their neigh-bors’ willingness to ward off danger.

Terns are one of the most vocal bird families, so to attract them to Egg Rock Kress devised a combination of decoys and audio recordings of their cries. It worked remarkably well. Within a few years common and Arctic terns returned. Endangered roseate terns came, too—they often fi nd safety by nesting within common tern colonies.

The technique’s success is evident as Kress, Post, and I delicately make our way to the island’s center. Arctic terns claim the bare rock along the shoreline. Puffi ns nest in the cracks and crevices of broken bedrock thrown up by winter storms. Farther inland, common terns arrange twig-size bits of fl otsam into little cupped nests where rock meets soil. Laughing gulls sit on their spot-ted eggs in the waist-high grass at island center. Underneath the grass, storm-petrels hide their eggs inside underground burrows.

The terns came back, but Post and three summer interns are here watching over the menagerie because Kress’s tern-based exit strategy didn’t work. “The tern colony is helpful, but eventually we realized it wasn’t enough,” Kress says. On the seven islands the project actively manages, supervisors like Post work sunup to sundown monitor-ing tern nests and puffi n burrows; warding off predators; and removing the weeds that choke out tern nests. “If we weren’t here, the black-backed gulls would return and absolutely take over,” Kress says.

The terns and puffi ns live in such a thin band of survival that a single event can wipe out an entire breeding cycle. Last year a severe high-tide storm destroyed least tern nests on the Maine coast and Stratton Island. “It came early enough in the season that the birds were able to lay again,” says John Gorey, who notes that many coastal birds relocated to the island

K R E S S continued from page 35

take advantage of one of the easiest ways to support the National Audubon Society. You can make a gift to Audubon by payroll contribution through EarthShare’s workplace giving program. EarthShare supports Audubon and many other respected environmental charities through hundreds of workplaces across the country. Federal employees may support Audubon in the annual Combined Federal Campaign by designating National Audubon Society’s CFC #12068 on their pledge forms.

Find out if your employer hosts a workplace giving campaign

and if it includes EarthShare. To learn more about how

you and your workplace can support Audubon through an

EarthShare charitable giving campaign, please call Renny

Perdue at 800-875-3863, ext. 14, or visit www.earthshare.org.

Give atthe Office...and MakeEvery DayEarth Day!


after the storm. “The problem was, they laid them below the high-tide line.”

After talking it over with Kress and Shannon on the mainland, Gorey and Pollom painstakingly moved each nest six inches every day. “We had to trick them,” Pollom explains. “If you move them too far at once, the terns become confused and abandon the nest.” It took two weeks to transfer the colony to safety.

Even a win can create its own prob-lems. As black-backed gulls were driven off, the smaller laughing gull, a native but rare Maine species, returned to nest in the tall grass. That positive development came at a price. “You put two thousand laughing gulls on an island like this, it’s like a rain of high-nitrogen fertilizer,” Kress says, hold-ing a guano-splotched grass blade. That led to the boom in mustard weeds, and the carpet experiment.

“We tried all sorts of things on the mus-tard,” Kress recalls. “Rock salt. Gravel. We did controlled burns.” Nothing worked. Three years ago, after landscaping fabric proved too thin and weak, a trip to Home Depot turned up a rock-colored outdoor carpet that’s been a hit with the terns and so far impenetrable to the mustard. It blends in so well that I had diffi culty picking it out—even when I was nearly on top of it.

K ress’s next challenge may take more than carpets to solve. Last winter a series of storms deposit-

ed 3,500 dead puffi ns onto the shores of Scotland, and at least 35 puffi ns washed ashore on Cape Cod.

Kress and others believe that climate change may be driving the severe storms, along with shifting patterns of fi sh avail-ability, in the North Atlantic. “Once they leave the nest and head out to sea, preda-tors aren’t the issue—it’s food. The dead puffi ns that washed up on Cape Cod were emaciated, in bad shape,” he says. “That was the concerning thing.”

Project Puffi n researchers saw worry-ing signs during the 2012 breeding sea-son. Instead of feeding their chicks ju-venile white hake, adult puffi ns returned to their burrows with butterfi sh, a larger

species. “We found dead puffi n chicks surrounded by rotting butterfi sh,” says Kress. “The chicks were starving because the fi sh were too big to swallow whole.” Kress believes that those that did fl edge may have been too weak to survive the abnormally stormy winter.

It’s not known whether the butterfi sh were unusually plentiful last summer, or if the juvenile white hake were late, or both. But it’s worrying. The National Marine Fisheries Service estimates that at least half of 36 commercially impor-tant North Atlantic fi sh species, includ-ing white hake, are moving their ranges north as a result of warming ocean wa-ters. “If the hake is declining, that’s going to be a problem for all those species that depend on it,” says Kress.

Toward the end of our time on Egg Rock, Kress asks Post if she’s seen any sign of butterfi sh around the puffi n burrows.

“Nothing yet,” she answers. Project managers on other islands had reported common terns and least terns—which feed their adult mates on the nest—re-turning with plentiful white hake.

“That’s a good sign,” says Kress. As we bid Post farewell and make our

way through the waist-high grass to-ward the shore, a fl urry of common terns dive on Kress and peck at my overly tall skull. He shouts, “They’re getting pretty intense! That’s good. That means their chicks are about to hatch.”

On the return ride to the mainland, Kress’s thoughts turn to the phone calls and emails waiting for him back at Proj-ect Puffi n’s summer offi ce in Bremen. Kress is advising on one of the most am-bitious international restoration projects, the effort to restore the critically endan-gered Chinese crested tern. The work is ramping up. In May greater crested tern decoys and an audio playback sys-tem were deployed on an island nature reserve in China’s Jiushan Islands. There are so few Chinese crested terns that biologists fi rst have to attract the more numerous greater crested terns and then use their presence to lure in the endan-gered terns. Just as human guardians have done for three decades elsewhere across the earth, the biologists will spend the entire nesting season on the island, tipping the balance in the birds’ favor. ■

Bruce Barcott writes for numerous maga-zines, including National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, and Outside. He visited bird-friendly cattle producers in Brazil for his most recent Audubon article (“Raising the Steaks,” audm.ag/SCGBirds).

Puffi ns and terns tolerate each other as nesting neighbors, and common terns are noto-riously tough defenders, often fl ocking together to attack predators.

It’s easy to see why birding in Peru is hard to beat. An extraor-dinary variety of natural habitats make Peru home to more avian species than any other country but one, and the record holder forhighest number of species (361)seen in a single day.

From coastal wetlands to high desert,

from mountain plateaus to ever-

green forests, from the Andes to

the Amazon, Peru’s diversity provides

countless distinct environments for over

1,780 bird species, 109 of them endemic.

Machu Picchu makes the south the

country’s best-known destination, but

the north and central regions offer their

own diverse birding routes. The north

is home to sought-after hummingbirds,

including the sword-billed and Andean

endemics such as the marvelous spatule-

tail. New to science in 2005, the Iqui-

tos gnatcatcher is currently known to

inhabit only the Allpahuayo-Mishana

National Reserve.

Central Peru offers easy access, many

options, and no drop-off in diversity.

Little surprise that Peru has twice

hosted the Birding Rally Challenge, in

which international teams of expert

birders compete in the “World Cup of

Birding.” This year’s winning team spot-

ted an astonishing 864 species in 6 days.

But birding in Peru is for everyone,

from amateur to expert. With so much

choice, the biggest challenge is planning

where to start your journey. For more information visit Peru.travel

Th e BEST BIRDERS...

FOLLOW THE BEST

BIRDING

TO PERU

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

RUFOUS-CRESTED COQUETTEBY JEREMY CORNEJO

BIRDWATCHING, BY TALIA VARGAS


night calls gutting golf courses...september-october 2013 fall birding trails | night calls |...

Documents