Sunday, May 23, 2010

Project Puffin


Project Puffin brought the puffins back to Maine. According to a Smithsonian article:
Though puffins endured elsewhere in their historic range—the North Atlantic coasts of Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Britain—by the 1960s the puffin was all but forgotten in Maine.
...
“After 100 years of absence and nine years of working toward this goal,” Kress wrote in the [1981] island logbook that evening, “puffins are again nesting at Eastern Egg Rock—a Fourth of July celebration I’ll never forget.”

Project Puffin has a web page here, which includes information on the 5/28 Birdathon.

2 comments:

  1. There is a small island called Lundy. The man who owned this island tryed to declare his island a country. He even produced his own coinage the denomination instead of dollars was Puffins his likeness on one side and a Puffin on the other.

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  2. Fascinating! Thanks! I looked it up, and the last owner donated it to the National Trust. Wikipedia says that during one period it was "ruled as a virtual fiefdom" and says, "...Martin Coles Harman, who proclaimed himself a king. Harman issued two coins of Half Puffin and One Puffin denominations in 1929... resulting in his prosecution under the United Kingdom's Coinage Act of 1870. The House of Lords found him guilty in 1931, and he was fined £5 with fifteen guineas expenses. The coins were withdrawn and became collectors' items."

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