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Barbara's Bakery: Barbara's and Puffins
Barbara's Bakery first became aware of the hearty little sea birds called puffins when a longtime employee fell in love with them on a trip to Alaska. At the time, Barbara's was searching for a name for its newest all-natural breakfast cereal. Perhaps it was the puffin's inspiring come-back story off the Maine coast or their tough-but-adorable image, but whatever the reason, the name rose to the top of the list and just seemed to fit.
That was 1995, when Barbara's introduced Original Puffins cereal and first learned about the Audubon Society's efforts to restore puffins to their former habitat of Eastern Egg Rock off the rugged coast of Maine. Once plentiful on this rocky island, by 1973, when Audubon launched Project Puffin, the orange-footed swimming birds had all but disappeared.
As Puffins (the cereal) gained a national following, puffins (the birds) gained an active supporter in Barbara's - and a promising foothold on their old Atlantic nesting ground. Between 1973 and 1986, Audubon naturalists transported a small colony of young puffins from puffin-rich Newfoundland and reintroduced them to Eastern Egg Rock. The first puffin pairs began to return to Eastern Egg Rock in 1977. Fifty-nine pairs nested there in summer 2003, a 13% increase from 2002.
Project Puffin celebrated its 30th anniversary during August 2004. Barbara's is proud to be the sponsor of Audubon's Project Puffin Cam. View real time video of puffins and their seabird neighbors at Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge. Learn more about them by visiting Audubon's www.projectpuffin.org.
End of 2005 Season News: The colony reached an all time high of 72 nesting pairs, including 9 new pairs. Three nesting birds were 28 years old and one pair broke the previous record for pair and burrow fidelity by nesting at the same location for their 18th consecutive year! At least 15 other pairs retained the same mate between 2004 and 2005. Although total number of pairs increased, some previously banded birds were not present and the number of individual banded puffins declined from 142 in 2004 to 124 in 2005. This suggests the colony experienced storm-related flooding that caused some pairs to abandon, while other nested later than usual. (Researchers arrived after the storms). Despite this, Egg Rock puffins produced an estimated 0.86 fledging/pair.
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