Who: Friends of Haystack Rock
What: The Great Cannon Beach Puffin Watch
When: July 1st through July 4th 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Where: In front of Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach
This seabird watching event, sponsored by the Friends of Haystack Rock, is part of a fireworks-free celebration in Cannon Beach. Spotting scopes and binoculars will be available for the public to view these magnificent birds up close, along with bird enthusiasts to help you find the tufted puffins and inform you about all of the seabirds nesting on Haystack Rock.
Friends of Haystack Rock (FOHR) promotes the preservation and protection of the intertidal life and birds that inhabit the Marine Garden and Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge at Haystack Rock. We do this in cooperation with Haystack Rock Awareness Program, other partners, and the community.
Haystack Rock is home to a Tufted Puffin breeding colony in Oregon. In early April puffins show up at Haystack Rock. Most of the puffins have already found their lifelong partners and are returning to the same protected burrow they used last year to raise their young. The Tufted Puffins will spend about 16 weeks at the Rock. For the first couple weeks the puffins stake out their territory and clean up their burrow. Once their burrow is ready, the female puffin will lay a single, chicken-sized egg, which both the male and female incubate. Incubation usually lasts 41-54 days. Though usually tucked back inside the burrow, newly hatched puffins appear at the Rock beginning in late June through mid to late August. Even though you may not be able to see the pufflings, activity around the rock is hectic and plentiful: it is fun to observe the parent puffins making multiple trips to their burrow with bills full of fish for their young. 38 to 59 days after hatching the pufflings will leave their burrows. Under the protection of darkness (to escape the ever-watchful, hungry eyes of bald eagles), all the pufflings will leave the safety of the rock and return to the open ocean, where they will spend the winter.
Tufted Puffins struggle with inadvertently ingesting ocean plastic, getting caught and drowning in gill-nets, and protecting their burrows from introduced mammalian predators such as foxes and rats. Since the mid-1990s, Tufted Puffin populations in Oregon and Washington have plummeted more than 95 percent.
During this event you are likely to also see the myriad of other sea birds nesting and/or residing at Haystack Rock including common murres, pigeon guillemots, cormorants, and black oystercatchers.
Tips to see Tufted Puffins at Haystack Rock:
- Your best chance to view these magnificent birds is between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m.
- Bring binoculars or plan to attend when the Haystack Rock Awareness Program is out with their scopes. View their website for details.
- Scan for these birds along the grassy top half of the rock, often from the middle towards the north side.
- Search the sky for flying birds! Look for stocky, clumsy, fast flyers with black bodies, white faces, and orange beaks and feet. They flap their wings vigorously.
- You can join the Haystack Rock Awareness Program on April 13 from 8 – 10 a.m. for their Welcome Back Puffins celebration!
Seeing a Tufted Puffin has always been magical, but given these birds have declined by more than 80% in Oregon over the last few decades, we want them to get all the attention they can. One of the biggest challenges we face is getting the word out. While people LOVE Tufted Puffins, many don’t know that they are at risk. Help us spread the word, and head out there to see them for yourself.
Meet the organizations working together to restore Tufted Puffins in Oregon! Tufted Puffins have been heavily declining in Oregon for decades. In 1998 Oregon had nearly 5,000 Tufted Puffins. In 2021, that number dropped to just 553. That’s why organizations across the west coast and beyond are working together with the goal of establishing and maintaining a viable, resilient Tufted Puffin population in Oregon.
Along with Seaside Aquarium, here are the organizations now working collaboratively to protect Tufted Puffins in Oregon.
- Friends of Haystack Rock
- American Bird Conservancy
- Bird Alliance of Oregon
- Haystack Rock Awareness Program
- Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
- Oregon State University
- National Audubon Society
- Shoreline Education for Awareness
- The Oregon Coast Aquarium
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
