This puffin fledgling was rescued in Cannon Beach and taken to the Wildlife Center of the North Coast. After some rest, good food, and hydration this little one was able to be released back into the wild.
The Tufted Puffin is an iconic seabird of Haystack Rock. Recently, their numbers have decreased dramatically at Haystack Rock and they are in significant decline or have disappeared entirely from colonies in California, Oregon,
Protect our Puffins Sweatshirt
To learn more about the plight of the puffins click the links below:
Cannon Beach, Oregon Puffins Facing Challenges
Puffin Watch!
Join us in July when we celebrate all things puffin!
July 1ST-4TH from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. we will be watching the best areal display known to man, Tufted Puffins! We will be down on the beach in front of Haystack Rock with birding scopes and binoculars trying to share our love of puffins with the rest of you. Watch as these comical birds fly in and out of their burrows, bring fish back to their young, or merely hang out with the rest of their brethren nesting on the Rock.
Board member Tracey Abel, focuses one of the birding scopes on a pair of puffins.
The best time to view puffins at Haystack Rock is April through August. They are most active in the morning between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. The best time to view puffins at Haystack Rock in Cannon beach is first thing in the morning.
Tufted Puffins at Haystack Rock
Haystack Rock is home to the largest 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. Despite the fact that you may not be able 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. The pufflings leave their burrows 38 to 59 days after hatching. Under the protection of dark (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.
