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On the afternoon of June 19, University of Maine senior Eily Buchanan spotted something peculiar through the narrow window of a wooden shelter while quietly monitoring and photographing seabirds on a midcoast Maine island: a razorbill with a fish in its hatchet-like beak. 

Razorbills, black-and-white seabirds, were common sightings during her hours-long data collection sessions on Eastern Egg Rock island, but their beaks were usually empty. After snapping a couple of photos of the bird as it flew past the blind, she saw that it was holding a sand lance, a small, slender silver fish, in its bill. It was the first sign of a major discovery: the first documented razorbills breeding on Eastern Egg Rock. 

Working as a summer research assistant with the National Audubon Society Seabird Institute’s Project Puffin, Buchanan learned that birds circling the island with fish in their beaks indicated that a chick had hatched. Project Puffin focuses on seabird restoration in the Gulf of Maine.

Throughout her three-hour stint of photographing and taking notes, with the sound of waves crashing against the rocks and salty air filtering into the shelter, Buchanan wondered if the same applied to razorbills and waited to return to the cabin and confirm her theory with her colleagues. Researchers had not yet documented a razorbill chick on the island.

Buchanan said that when she displayed the photo of the razorbill holding the fish and her colleague, Sydney Kuipers, confirmed she had seen the bird too, her supervisor, wildlife biologist Alison Ballard, lit up and declared that a razorbill chick had hatched on the island. It marked the southernmost documented nesting site for the species, extending its breeding range approximately 35 miles south.

“Confirming the razorbill chick and the location of the burrow was a very exciting moment and a collective team effort from everyone on the Egg Rock crew,” Buchanan said. “With climate change and warming waters pushing many species north, the fact that this pair moved south shows how resilient razorbills are to climate change.”

Founded by Stephen W. Kress, Project Puffin has a 53-year legacy rooted in Eastern Egg Rock — the site of the world’s first restored seabird colony. That restoration required years of dedication and research.

During her three months on Eastern Egg Rock, Buchanan’s work followed a weather-dependent routine. Her duties included checking data on rainy days and monitoring the feeding of Common, Roseate and Arctic Tern chicks, which involved tracking how often chicks were fed, which parent fed them and what species of fish the parents brought.

Each day began with a 6 a.m. bird count from the cabin roof. The crew also recorded weather conditions three times daily, measuring wind speed, sea surface and air temperatures, wave conditions and cloud cover.

Puffin research was particularly intensive, requiring hours of resighting puffins — sitting in the wooden shelter with a scope to read band numbers — to track each bird’s history and movements. The team used these sessions to identify adult puffins with worn bands, then prioritized trapping those birds to replace the bands. After being released, the birds could be accurately identified for years to come.

The Eastern Egg Rock crew also conducted puffin grubbing, reaching into burrows where puffins had brought fish to safely retrieve, weigh, measure and band the chicks.

“Puffin grubbing on Egg was particularly hard because there were so many crevices and small places where the chicks could hide in the rocks that were extremely hard to reach,” Buchanan said. “It was dark under the rocks so we’d be shining flashlights down into these crevices looking for nesting material or the chick, using our phones if we couldn’t see around a corner.”

Buchanan and her colleagues occasionally hosted visitors from the mainland, including volunteers, postgraduate researchers and donors, giving them tours of the island while her supervisor explained the work being done during the season.

“If I could sum up working with Eily, it’s like working with the puffin that’s bringing in all the fish. Charismatic, fun and on top of her game,” Ballard said.

Buchanan began her college career at 91���� as an undecided major in the Honors College. Studying native and invasive crab species as part of a 91���� program on Hurricane Island helped her decide to pursue ecology and environmental sciences.

“I’d always been interested in wildlife and birds, but I think the experience on Hurricane Island really solidified that interest and made me realize that I wanted to major in ecology and environmental science,” Buchanan said. “It also made me realize that I want to make a difference and contribute to conservation, especially as climate change accelerates and puts a lot of species at risk.”

After graduating from 91����, Buchanan said she hopes to return to Project Puffin to help conserve seabirds and build on the project’s legacy for future researchers.

“This field experience has definitely made me want to continue building a career in conservation, research and fieldwork,” she said.

Story by Alexa Rose Perocillo, student news writer. 

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu