Searching for the Tufted Puffin with San Juan Cruises

San Juans tufted puffins
The tufted puffin is a gorgeous bird with a large, triangular beak and a rockstar appearance. Photo credit: Alberto Vilca.
0 Shares

There aren’t many places out of Africa you’ll hear someone call “Rhino!” but the Strait of Juan de Fuca is one of them. The person calling is holding a pair of Bushnell binoculars to his eyes and pointing toward the ocean, where a Rhinoceros auklet has just been spotted. The eyes of everyone on board are riveted in the auklet’s direction, the first significant bird sighting of the day.

San Juans birdwatching
Birdwatchers on the birding tours come equipped with binoculars, field guides and some very long camera lenses. Photo credit: Lauren Kramer.

But it’s not the auklet they’ve come to see on a grey July morning in an ocean full of chop. The folks out for the San Juans Cruises puffin tour on this day are looking for the tufted puffin. An elusive member of the auks family, puffins are members of a species that constitutes the northern version of the penguin. Once boasting nesting colonies in multiple locations in the San Juan islands, only one tufted puffin colony remains — and to find it you have to travel all the way to Smith Island. A good two hours journey by boat from the Fairhaven Ferry Terminal, Smith Island is a cake-shaped isle across from the west coast of Whidbey Island, and our ride there was a choppy one, to say the least.

Puffins are fabulous looking birds and it’s rare to be able to tick them off your birding list. Stocky, dark seabirds, they’re distinguished by their massive, triangular, orange-red bills and long, curved yellow ear tufts that give them a punky, rock star appearance. They fly on small, narrow wings, nest inside burrows on sea cliffs, and are expert swimmers and divers.

Unfortunately for them, their nesting habitat on Smith Island is eroding slowly and steadily. The island is calving into the ocean and taking with it any signs of human habitation that remain. The old lighthouse has already been lost to erosion and the little house that lighthouse operators once inhabited is next in line. “In the next few decades that island will disappear,” predicts Victoria Souze, the marine naturalist on board our cruise.

San Juans scenic
The scenery in the San Juans is staggeringly beautiful. Photo credit: Lauren Kramer.

I’m in the company of some serious birdwatchers. Equipped with long camera lenses, well-worn birding field guides, binoculars and tripods, they’ve come from north and south to join the tufted puffin tour, and they’re ready for action. When lunch is called a couple hours into the trip, hardly anyone lines up for their lasagna and Caesar salad because they’re on the upper deck, ‘birding,’ and it’s just more important.

Truth is, there’s lots of birdlife to see on a trip in the San Juans. Souze takes us past rocky outcroppings where pigeon guillemots nest, black oystercatchers pick their way over the rocks, and we’re treated to sightings of newborn seal pups, just a week old. We pass a flock of Heermann’s Gulls in a feeding frenzy on the water, distinguished by their red beaks. They’ve left their nests in Baja to get here.

On Smith Island an eagle sits quietly on a high bough, watching us and the marine life below. The puffins’ nests are far out of his reach, deep as they are burrowed in the sandstone. That means newborn puffins, who stay in the nests for the first five-to-six weeks of their lives, are safe while both their parents forage for food.

Smith Island is surrounded by forests of kelp beds and it’s in those beds that the rhino auklets and tufted puffins search for food. The captain lets our boat drift quietly so we have time to spot the little puffins, though keeping them in our line of vision is difficult. No sooner are the cameras lined up than they disappear beneath the surface. By contrast, the seals are curious about our vessel, and moms and pups swim close by to get a closer look, unaccustomed to seeing people near their Smith Island. San Juan

Smith Island
Smith Island is a cake-shaped isle that is gradually eroding and diminishing in size. Photo credit: Lauren Kramer.

By contrast, the seals are curious about our vessel, and moms and pups swim close by to get a closer look, unaccustomed to seeing people near their Smith Island. San Juan Cruises offers just four birdwatching tours a year, in July and August, when avid birders are taken to Smith Island or Sucia and Patos Islands. Our group ranges from a teen of 15 to folks in their 80s, all quickly bonded by their knowledge of birds and excitement to see more of them. Birdwatchers are a unique group: extremely patient, their spotting senses sharp and in high alert, and their dedication to their hobby absolute. If you’re even remotely interested in birds, a birdwatching tour in the San Juans is a day-long education that will be full of cool sightings from green herons to tufted puffins, and even a rhino. A rhino auklet, that is.

To join a tour visit www.whales.com. Birdwatching tours cost $89 for adults and $44.50 for kids age 7-17.

 

0 Shares