Eastern Egg Rock Island is an island in the Town of

St. George Saint George (Greek: Γεώργιος (Geórgios), Latin: Georgius, Arabic: القديس جرجس; died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was a Christian who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to tradition he was a soldier ...

in Knox County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...

. It is owned by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), and it is located off the southern Atlantic Coast of the state.

Project Puffin Project Puffin is an effort initiated by Dr. Stephen W. Kress of the National Audubon Society to learn how to restore puffins to historic nesting islands in the Gulf of Maine. It was started in 1973 when puffins were nesting in only two locatio ...

, a restoration effort by the

Audubon Society The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organ ...

, is implemented on Eastern Egg Rock through a contract with the MDIFW."Project Puffin: Eastern Egg Rock."
Audubon Society. Retrieved September 6, 2010.

Geography

The island is by the mouth of Maine's

Muscongus Bay Muscongus Bay is a bay on the coast of Maine, United States, between Penobscot Bay and John's Bay. Muscongus was the name of an Abenaki village meaning "fishing place" or "many r largerock ledges." John Smith recorded the river in 1616 as Nusco ...

, about off

Pemaquid Point The Pemaquid Point Light is a historic U.S. lighthouse located in Bristol, Lincoln County, Maine, at the tip of the Pemaquid Neck. History The lighthouse was commissioned in 1827 by President John Quincy Adams and built that year. Because of poo ...

. It is treeless and is in size.

Project Puffin

In 1973, Stephen W. Kress of the Audubon Society started

, an effort to restore seabird colonies to the southern Maine area.

Atlantic puffin The Atlantic puffin ('), also known as the common puffin, is a species of seabird in the auk family. It is the only puffin native to the Atlantic Ocean; two related species, the tufted puffin and the horned puffin is found in the northeastern ...

s from

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

and terns were reintroduced to the island. Puffins had not been spotted on the island since 1885. Biologists from other countries joined the society to help coax the birds back to Maine's islands and control the population of predators. Techniques used for restoring the birds, such as playing recordings of puffin calls, were mostly effective,Meara, Emmett (December 3, 1981)
"Eastern Egg Rock puffins return"
''

The Bangor Daily News The ''Bangor Daily News'' is an American newspaper covering a large portion of central and eastern Maine, published six days per week in Bangor, Maine. The ''Bangor Daily News'' was founded on June 18, 1889; it merged with the ''Bangor Whig and ...

'' (

Bangor, Maine Bangor ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Maine and the county seat of Penobscot County. The city proper has a population of 31,753, making it the state's 3rd-largest settlement, behind Portland (68,408) and Lewiston (37,121). Modern Bangor ...

). p. 28. Retrieved October 23, 2010. and Kress wrote a children's book about the success of the project. With the help of fish delivered to Eastern Egg Rock, 69 percent of Maine's

roseate tern The roseate tern (''Sterna dougallii'') is a species of tern in the family Laridae. The genus name ''Sterna'' is derived from Old English "stearn", "tern", and the specific ''dougallii'' refers to Scottish physician and collector Dr Peter McDoug ...

s were nesting there by 2004. Now the island is the southern limit of puffin habitat in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

. To protect the birds, the island is closed to visitors for the breeding season, which runs from April through August.

References

External links

* {{authority control National Audubon Society Islands of Knox County, Maine Protected areas of Knox County, Maine Islands of Maine Coastal islands of Maine

Geography

Project Puffin

References

Further reading

External links