Barbara's Bakery first became aware of the hearty little sea birds
called puffins when a longtime employee fell in love with them on a trip
to Alaska. At the time, Barbara's was searching for a name for its newest
all-natural breakfast cereal. Perhaps it was the puffin's inspiring
come-back story off the Maine coast or their tough-but-adorable image,
but whatever the reason, the name rose to the top of the list and just
seemed to fit.
That was 1995, when Barbara's introduced Original Puffins cereal and
first learned about the Audubon Society's efforts to restore puffins
to their former habitat of Eastern Egg Rock off the rugged coast of
Maine. Once plentiful on this rocky island, by 1973, when Audubon
launched Project Puffin, the orange-footed swimming birds had all
but disappeared.
As Puffins (the cereal) gained a national following, puffins
(the birds) gained an active supporter in Barbara's - and a
promising foothold on their old Atlantic nesting ground.
Between 1973 and 1986, Audubon naturalists transported a small
colony of young puffins from puffin-rich Newfoundland and
reintroduced them to Eastern Egg Rock. The first puffin pairs
began to return to Eastern Egg Rock in 1977. Fifty-nine pairs
nested there in summer 2003, a 13% increase from 2002.
Project Puffin celebrated its 30th anniversary during
August 2004. Barbara's is proud to be the sponsor of
Audubon's Project Puffin Cam.
View real
time video of puffins and their seabird neighbors at
Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge. Learn more about
them by visiting Audubon's
www.projectpuffin.org.
End of 2005 Season News: The colony reached an all time high of
72 nesting pairs, including 9 new pairs. Three nesting birds
were 28 years old and one pair broke the previous record for
pair and burrow fidelity by nesting at the same location for
their 18th consecutive year! At least 15 other pairs retained
the same mate between 2004 and 2005. Although total number of
pairs increased, some previously banded birds were not present and
the number of individual banded puffins declined from 142 in 2004
to 124 in 2005. This suggests the colony experienced storm-related
flooding that caused some pairs to abandon, while other nested
later than usual. (Researchers arrived after the storms).
Despite this, Egg Rock puffins produced an estimated 0.86 fledging/pair.
