This story was originally produced by the New Hampshire Bulletin, an independent local newsroom that allows NHPR and other outlets to republish its reporting.
Every summer, New Hampshire’s seacoast draws visitors in droves, from sunbathing tourists to ravenous greenhead horseflies.
Less expected are Atlantic puffins, which are rare in the state year-round and in summertime become so uncommon that a sighting triggers a statewide birdwatching alert.
One of those alerts went out early this July, when eBird user Braden Tingle reported an Atlantic puffin (also known as a common puffin, or by the Latin name Fratercula arctica) near Rye’s Star Island.
The puffin, Tingle reported, flew past a boat and landed near some black guillemots, a species of seabird related to puffins and known to nest on the Isles of Shoals, before taking off once more and heading east over the open sea.
Tingle could not be reached to discuss the sighting. But New Hampshire Audubon, which tracks rare fowl throughout the state with the help of online reports like Tingle’s, confirmed the observation by analyzing the included photos, said community science project leader Grace McCulloch. The puffin was noted in an Audubon Rare Bird Alert issued on July 6.
“The Atlantic Puffin was a rare and exciting sighting!” McCulloch wrote in a Friday email. Puffins do not breed in New Hampshire; in North America, their southernmost known nesting ground is Eastern Egg Rock, in midcoast Maine. Star Island, where New Hampshire’s puffin was reported this July, is part of the Isles of Shoals, an archipelago about 6 miles offshore from Portsmouth and about 86 miles southwest, as the puffin flies, of Eastern Egg Rock.
New Hampshire Audubon receives only a few reports each year of puffins in New Hampshire waters, McCulloch said. Almost all of those occur far offshore.
“They are not something you would see from Hampton Beach,” she said.
Sightings are especially uncommon in summer, when the birds are nesting and raising chicks on the northern islands where they were born.
So what might bring a puffin so far from home at the height of nesting season?
Most likely, the seabird’s journey to the Granite State was gastronomically motivated, said Don Lyons, director of conservation science at the Audubon Seabird Institute in Bremen, Maine. Puffins forage and dive for various species of small fish, sometimes traveling long distances to find prey.
“Puffins are, you know, at all times of year, worried about where their next meal is going to come from — like us,” Lyons said. “So most likely, when a puffin is spotted away from a nesting colony, they’re out foraging.”
In summer, puffins generally stick to foraging in shallow waters around their colonies. The distance this particular puffin appears to have ventured from a colony during summer indicates that it is likely unattached, Lyons and McCulloch said. It may be, for example, a young bird that hasn’t begun to nest, an older bird without a mate, or a partnered bird whose egg or chick failed to survive.
The Northeast U.S. is the southernmost tip of breeding territory for Atlantic puffins, which nest on rocky islands across the North Atlantic. But at one time, the birds were substantially more common in the Northeast, scientists say.
The exact extent of their former range is unknown, due to limited historical records and the difficulty of observing the birds on land, where they burrow under rocks to nest, Lyons said. But history is clear that colonists pursued puffins relentlessly for meat, eggs, and feathers until they were nearly extirpated from U.S. shores.
A dwindling population of birds held on at Maine’s Matinicus Rock, where Audubon eventually posted wardens for their protection. But other islands where the seabirds once made their nests were wiped completely bare.
Eventually, a groundbreaking experiment that began in the 1970s, involving transplanted chicks and puffin dummies, restored breeding colonies to two islands in Maine. And two other islands have seen puffin colonies reestablish naturally, both in northern Maine near Acadia National Park.
Atlantic puffins are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List. Among the threats they face, Lyons said, is climate change, which unbalances ocean food chains. This is especially concerning for puffins in the Gulf of Maine, where water is warming faster than almost any other ocean surface water in the world.
Marine heat waves cause fish to change their behavior, Lyons said. When the fish species puffins rely on for food flee to cooler waters, this can force the birds to eat suboptimal species. One example of this is the Atlantic butterfish, which thrives in warmer water and so is less apt to migrate away during a marine heat wave. But the butterfish is round — “It’s what we call deep-bodied,” Lyons said — and tough for young puffins to swallow. When butterfish are all a parent can bring home to the nest, a chick may starve.
Puffins also depend on healthy habitats in the open ocean, where they spend the nine months of the year they are not nesting. During this period, puffins’ range expands, stretching southward and out to sea. The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, set aside by then-President Barack Obama in 2016, was protected in part because of its importance for puffins, Lyons said.
The status of the monument has fluctuated with shifts in presidential administrations since then, with President Donald Trump taking steps to remove restrictions on commercial fishing within the monument during both his administrations. Yet the area is still protected from other development or uses, and provides an important habitat for the birds, Lyons said.
Nonetheless, puffins are generally increasing in number on the few Maine islands where they’re found, Lyons said. Eventually, their population growth will slow, he expects, as space diminishes on those rocky shores. It’s unlikely, but not impossible, that they would then expand out to inhabit other islands.
More robust puffin populations will increase sightings of the birds, including on foraging trips down south. But it’s unlikely, Lyons said, that the puffins would ever take up permanent residence in New Hampshire.
In fact, scant records make it hard to say whether there ever were puffin colonies in what is now New Hampshire to begin with, Lyons said.
On one hand, the birds prefer islands miles out at sea, out of reach from predators like mink, apt swimmers that would happily cross a mile or two of water if they smelled the promise of a seabird colony. Islands like the Isles of Shoals fit at least that criteria. But being fairly sandy, they don’t have much habitat that would appeal to rock-nesting puffins, Lyons said.
“Probably, not very many puffins would ever consider it,” he said. “But, you know, never say never.”
Puffins generate excitement anywhere they go, Lyons said.
“Puffins are really iconic,” he said. “People really find them charismatic, and fun to view. … When they show up somewhere new or unexpected, that is a fun and exciting event.”
Future sightings of brave puffins far afield in places like New Hampshire will depend on the conservation of nesting colonies where they exist already, in Maine and northward, he added.
“Hopefully, we’ll keep the puffin populations well protected here, and there can be plenty of sightings in the future,” he said.
