Birds of New England- Atlantic Puffins, Common Eiders, Black Guillemots, Great Black-backed Gulls, Bald Eagles and More!

 

(Note: This post is a follow-up to my July 29 post "New England Vacation- Fireworks, Witches, Lighthouses, Puffins and More!")

During our July weeklong tour of coastal New England, we saw many references to Puffins. Puffins are described as “charismatic small seabirds” found in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans. They spend most of their lives at sea and come ashore to breed in large colonies on cliffs or islands. Their unique color combination earned nicknames such as “clowns of the sea” and “sea parrots.”

In this post, I’ll share my photographs of Atlantic Puffins and 16 other bird species I saw along the New England coast. I scored seven “lifer” birds, ones I had never seen before. 

An Atlantic Puffin model is in front of a gift shop next to the West Street Hotel in Bar Harbor, Maine, where we stayed two nights. Puffins actually have orange feet. Maybe the color faded on this figure. 

Puffins, of course, are much smaller than this. They are about the size of crows. 

Boothbay, Maine, where we visited a few days before Bar Harbor, offers boat tours to an Atlantic Puffin colony. The birds nest on Eastern Egg Rock, a small island about five miles offshore in Muscongus Bay. 

Puffin souvenirs are available at shops along the northeast coastline. This is one that I bought in Bar Harbor. 

I also came home with a shirt featuring an Atlantic Puffin. I bought this at a Boothbay Harbor shop. 

New England Vacation- Fireworks, Witches, Lighthouses, Puffins and More!

 

Wow, a few days back from our extraordinary vacation along the coastline of New England and the full experience is just starting to be absorbed. 

Note: I added a second New England pictorial post showing the many birds I photographed during our trip. Click here to see it. 

Our trip began July 3 when we flew from Charleston to Boston, rented a car, then drove to the Residence Inn Cambridge. Our two days here included seeing the excellent Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular on this very special Fourth of July- the United States’ 250th birthday.

We then traveled up the Atlantic coast, spending nights in Portsmouth, N.H., Boothsbay, Maine, Kennebunk, Maine and Bar Harbor, Maine. We stopped at many places in between in these three states. 

Near Bar Harbor, we visited Acadia National Park where we ascended Cadillac Mountain, the highest summit on the U.S. eastern seaboard at 1,530 feet. This is where we are pictured on July 10. 

Panorama of Cadillac Mountain. That’s Frenchman Bay filled with numerous small islands. 

During the 286 miles from Cambridge to Bar Harbor we saw a lot and did a lot. We walked around the Harvard University campus on Independence Day. That’s a statue of school namesake Rev. John Harvard behind us. More on that visit later in this post. 

Things got a little creepy in Salem, Mass. during our tour of the Salem Witch Museum. 

In Rockport, Mass. we saw this red fishing shack (Motif No. 1 is its official name), an iconic 1884 structure considered “the most painted building in America.”