Poking around the camp’s library, he found a book- Maine Birds, by Ralph S. While an ornithology graduate student at Cornell University, Kress worked in the summer as an educator at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Bremen, Maine. To mark the 50th anniversary of Project Puffin, today a part of Audubon’s Seabird Institute, Audubon spoke to the people who were there at the program’s daring start and those carrying forward its now-global legacy of seabird restoration. ![]() Remarkably, his plan did succeed, eclipsing what he envisioned. If he was successful, he hoped to provide a model for restoring seabirds elsewhere. Inspired by reintroductions of Peregrine Falcons after DDT nearly wiped them out, Stephen Kress, a 28-year-old environmental educator, dreamed of reestablishing Maine’s lost puffin colonies. Those five chicks were the first Atlantic Puffins in a century to set webbed feet on Eastern Egg Rock, a seven-acre island located six miles off the Maine coast. “I don’t know if I breathed that whole time,” says Kathleen Blanchard, recounting that night in August 1973 when she watched the chick she’d raised from when it was 10 days old leave for parts unknown. ![]() Finally, it leaped into the water and then paddled into the darkness. Like a nervous swimmer on a high board, the plump bird with a parrotlike bill stood, whirring its wings. On a tall boulder overlooking the sea, one paused and peered over the ledge. One by one, five puffin chicks scrambled over rocks in the moonlight, making their way toward the sound of crashing waves.
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