Asking the tuft questions
David Irons/US Fish and Wildlife Service
Oregon’s dynamic and topographically diverse coastline presents challenges for studying burrow-nesting seabirds. The intertidal location of Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach provides a unique window into one of Oregon’s largest remaining tufted puffin colonies.
Join the Cape Perpetua Collaborative’s Young Scientist Webinar Series at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, April 12, as OSU masters student Noah Dolinajec discusses how photography and community science has been used to explore the diets of Oregon’s tufted puffins.
Why have the number of these birds declined so much? Is there a reason that the populations aren’t rebounding? What are the birds feeding their chicks during the breeding season?
These are just some of the questions that remain unanswered about this iconic Oregon Coast species. After 2020, a year in which the tufted puffin was denied federal protections due to data gaps in things like chick diet composition and genetics, it became clear that addressing these gaps was necessary to inform future management decisions.
The OSU Seabird Oceanography Lab implemented a non-invasive approach to studying tufted puffin chick diet by employing shore-based digital photography and community-sourced photography to capture photographs of tufted puffins with bill loads — carrying fish in their bills back to the burrow to feed their chicks. A more thorough understanding of the forage fish that tufted puffins are consuming on the Oregon Coast could provide important ecological indicators for both piscivorous coastal birds and Oregon’s forage fish populations.
Dolinajec is a professional science master’s student in the Seabird Oceanography Lab. He is also the project coordinator for the Oregon Coast community science initiative, “Birds with Fish,” which aims to investigate the diets of coastal Oregon birds through non-invasive community sourced photography.
His focus is on gaining more insight into what Oregon’s tufted puffins and other at-risk coastal avian species are feeding their chicks during breeding season.
Born and raised in Oregon, Dolinajec has spent the past three years living in Antwerp, Belgium with his fiancé. When not geeking out on birds and other wildlife he is likely enjoying a cold beer at one of Oregon’s many breweries and making friends with strangers’ dogs.
For more information, go to capeperpetuacollaborative.org.