I’m off to Machias Seal Island to see the puffin! But puffin are birds, they’re not seals. Where are the seals? They are nearby on Gull Rock. Where are the gulls? Everywhere.
I leave the harbor at Cutler, Maine, with six other adventurers, a boat captain, Andy, and his helper, Tyler. Andy looks like his name sounds, an intrepid spirit with long blond hair. He has been running folk out to Seal Island to see the puffins for 24 years. Tyler looks like a young Matt Damon. He is both competent and articulate. I ask him where he goes to college. He tells me he is 16.
I am different from the other adventurers: my camera lens only extends four inches, and its not encased in camouflage wrappings. I have stepped into another world---that of the bird people, or birders. They are all quiet and they all have cameras with lenses a foot to a foot and a half long. They are selective: they only take pictures of birds, particularly ones in flight. When they aren’t taking pictures of birds or looking for birds to photograph, they cup their hands around their eyes, get real close to the four-inch-diagonal screen on the backs of their cameras, and review their pictures.
Puffins and razorbills and mirs are all auks. They are colonizing birds, which is why there are six thousand of them on this island, which is a granite outcrop of 20 acres located in the Bay of Fundy about nine miles off the Maine coast.
We can’t get ashore because the swells are too high, which is okay by me. I’m here for the boat ride, which is real nice. The sky is clear and there is only a slight wind. And I am able to observe both the birds and the birders.
Captain Andy fills us in about the status of the island. The British put a lighthouse on it in the 1830s. Canada now maintains the lighthouse and has done so continuously since it acquired dominion status. The United States and Canada dispute the sovereignty of the island. The United States claims it because it is only nine miles from the US coastline. Its also less than twelve miles from the nearest Canadian territory, Grand Manon Island, New Brunswick. Canada also claims it on the basis of 180 years of continuous possession. To maintain that possession, Canada continues to man the lighthouse with two lighthouse keepers. Since most lighthouses today are operated automatically and without lighthouse keepers, this is an expensive undertaking. So far as I know, no one has held a preferential election among the island’s true historical residents, the auks.
Mileage: 255. Cumulative mileage: 4,624
Here are some of my pictures. There are some more on the Miscellany page.
 |
| Atlantic or Common Puffin |
 |
| Razorbill |
 |
| They Sit Up Like Penguins |
