United States - Maine - Eastern Egg Rock

We sailed around the lobster trap lined Egg Rock Island, the smell of guano wafted in the air, to view Maine’s Puffin colony. This island is home to the world's first restored Atlantic Puffin colony. They are alot smaller than Pacific puffins, and early on my zoom camera battery went dead. : (

From Audubon:

The methods initiated here in 1973 have been replicated dozens of times worldwide to help endangered and threatened seabirds. Like many Maine coast seabird colonies, nesting seabird populations were diminished and eventually extirpated by a combination of egging, hunting for meat and feathers, and displacement by expanding Herring and Great Black-backed Gull populations that increased in response to fishing practices and municipal waste. Prior to recolonization, puffins last nested in 1885 and terns last nested in 1936. Gull management, the translocation of nearly 1,000 young puffins from Newfoundland, and social attraction (decoys and mirror boxes) were the primary tools for restoring puffins. In response to the puffin restoration, five pairs of puffins began nesting in 1981; by 2017, at least 172 pairs were nesting on the island. Tern restoration relied on gull management and social attraction (decoys and sound); the first terns nested in 1980 and today the colony supports approx. 1,000 pairs.