Sea Birds of the Maine Coast

Colorful puffins, which pop in and out of underground burrows they've dug in an islands' meager soil; the slender, graceful Arctic terns, which make an annual flight of unthinkable length; and the big, thickly feathered eider ducks, which carefully lead their strings of puffball chicks among the boulders and surf. These are some of the fourteen species that nest and rear their young on Maine's thousands of offshore islands.