Pay dirt for Project Puffin

EASTERN EGG ROCK, Maine

FOR WEEKS, researchers reached in vain for the puffin chicks. Finally, on July 23, with colleagues holding the searchers' ankles as they contorted to get their bodies as far underneath the jumbled boulders and as deep into the puffin burrows as they could, out they came with their first chick of the season.

Coordinator Scott Hall banded the chick, which sometimes bit into his hand to the laughter of the crew of Jen Knight, Lisa Quirk, Jeff Kimmons, Maria Felix, Malcolm Grant, and Matt Martinkovic. "It never stops being special," Hall said. He has worked since 1992 for the Audubon Society's Project Puffin. "It is always amazing to think that when we pull the chick out, it's the first look at the world it will fly into and won't come back for at least three years."

Kimmons, a graduate student at the University of Arkansas, said, "Not finding the chicks earlier in the summer was like all the times in Little League baseball where you dream of hitting a home run but you never do. Today we finally hit one."

This week, their data hit a grand slam. Project Puffin founder Steve Kress, who began restoring the bird to this island in the 1970s after it was eliminated in the late 19th century, said yesterday that the project set a new record of 90 pairs of puffins.

"Every year is a big suspense to me," Kress said. "I try not to keep asking the interns how many puffins there are, because I don't want to put pressure on them. The island probably could eventually support several hundred puffins."

Particularly extraordinary is that one of the original puffin chicks in the project, a Newfoundland transplant banded Y-54, is now 30 years old and bred this summer on Eastern Egg. Puffins lay one egg a year, and Kress said that Y-54 has produced 25 chicks, with its "children" now breeding on the island.

Y-54 is older than most of the researchers, who are in graduate school or are recent grads. Knight said, "The first puffin I ever held will always be one of the coolest things I ever did in my life."

Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.