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Dapper razorbill auks stand guard over Machias Seal Island, the most southerly breeding colony for the species in the
world.
I visited Machias Seal twice in the 1980s, and on both occasions I heard the island before I could see it
through the thick shroud of fog—a product of the bay's cold waters and warmer summer air—that often drapes
this 10-hectare (25-acre) hunk of wave-washed granite. The murmurings and cries of the seabirds mingled
with the shushing sound of the surf. On the two-hour trip from Grand Manan Island, I spied Atlantic puffins on
the water with several sardines draped in their colorful, parrotlike beaks, and looked up to see the graceful sil-
houettes of terns as they hovered on their delicate, backswept wings. Once the island came into view, groups
of razorbill auks, relatives of the extinct great auk, aligned onshore in a seemingly formal pose in their black-
and-white plumage, along the granite boulders that form the island's natural breakwater.
Traditionally, some 2,800 Atlantic puffins have nested here, making it the largest colony of puffins south of
Great Island, Newfoundland. It is also the most southerly breeding colony in the world of razorbill auks, with
900 pairs joining their alcid cousins, and historically, it has been host to the largest colony of Arctic terns in
eastern North America. In the past, approximately 2,800 pairs of Arctic terns were joined by 1,330 pairs of
common terns, as well as small numbers of Leach's storm petrels. In recent years, however, the number of
terns nesting on the islands has dropped drastically, and since 2006 terns have failed to nest on the island at all.
Changes have also been observed in the diet of the alcids, with sand lance, krill, and fish larvae replacing ju-
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