The World Link News May 31, 2009
BANDON - Grab your spotting scope. Bring along that camera with a big lens. Tufted puffins are back on Bandon's Elephant Rock.

For the first time since 2001, a pair is nesting on the big rock just off Coquille Point. It's one of numerous rocks, reefs and islands in the Coquille Point Unit of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge.

"Local puffin watchers are really excited to see these birds return," said Dave Ledig, South Coast refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The compact, jet-black birds with dark orange bills and golden tufted feathers on the sides of their heads are quite striking during spring and summer. The puffins spend most of the year at sea, but for up to 12 weeks in the spring, they're here.

More than a dozen pairs regularly nested on the rock formation in the 1970s and '80s. Biologists believe foxes may be partly to blame for the disappearance of the breeding pairs of puffins at Elephant Rock. 

"Table Rock and Face Rock had greater populations of puffins back then, too," Ledig said.

USFWS studies indicate Oregon's tufted puffin population has declined by about 75 percent over the past 20 years. Other seabirds declined, too.

Predators gobble many. Biologists also say there's less food due to changing ocean conditions. City lights might scare some off, but Bandon's worked to lessen light impacts.

Something's working, because some local seabird populations have rebounded.

Want to see the new pair of puffins? Get up early.

"They are most active around their breeding burrows then, and the morning sun from the east provides the best lighting for observation and photography," Ledig said.

But remember to stay off the rocks, reefs and islands.