Ocean State Bird Club Blog: Machias Seal Island Puffin Trip

On Thursday I got to cross off one of my top priorities from my bucket list. I went to Machias Seal Island to see the puffins (other Alcids and Arctic Terns). This trip had been three years in the making. Luckily it did not disappoint.

I had reservation to take this trip from Bold Coast Charters since 2019. I was supposed to go on the trip June 2019. Unfortunately for me, I got weathered out by a storm that brought with it ten foot waves. My friend Laurie and I planned a vacation around the trip. After my cancelled trip, I did spend five days in Acadia National Park. So I rescheduled for Thursday June 25, 2020, but as we all know, nothing good happened in 2020, I rescheduled for June 24 and hoped the third time was the charm. When I rescheduled for this year. I asked my friend Sue Palmer if she wanted to take the trip. She said yes.

Logistics-

The awesome little house Sue rented

First off, you need to make a reservation. Reservation period usually starts just after the New Year. The sell out fast. As in, a day or two!!! When I made my reservations for 2019, they could be bought at 8:30 am Jan 5. I started calling right then and hit redial 38 times (exact count). I talked to Captain Andy and he answered all of my questions for five minutes. I also sent an email before I got through on the phone. Tickets for the year were sold out by the afternoon the following day!!!

Reservations for 2021 were different. The people that got Covid cancelled had first dibs, Instead of calling them, they contacted me. I sent an email with the same day as last year.

The cost of a ticket is $160. Half is paid by check mailed to Bold Coast Charters after you make your reservations. The other half is due cash or check the day of your trip.

The boat holds 15 paying customers. Its name is the Barbara Frost which was Captain Andy's mother's name.

Website- https://www.boldcoast.com/

To find out when reservations for trips can be made check the website everyday after Christmas. If this is something you want to do, you need to know when reservations can be made and set an alarm on your phone so you can start immediately.

Getting there- You probably aren't going to fly to Maine from RI so you will have to make the long drive to Cutler on the Bold Coast of Maine. From the MA/RI border where I live, my GPS said it would take me 6 hrs 24 minutes. This was leaving my house at the god awful hour of 3:30 am Wednesday. This meant I got through all of the Boston traffic before it started. However, realistically it is a seven hour drive. I drove straight through stopping at one rest area just to use the bathroom and I got gas in Ellsworth. It still took me seven hours because of road construction near Bangor. My ride home took 7 hrs 30 minutes thanks to hitting the MA border at 3:30 pm on a Friday.

Accommodations- When I got weathered out in 2019, I stayed at Cobscook State Park about 45 minutes from Cutler. The campground and park are beautiful. If you like camping, I highly recommend it. This time around, Sue got an Airbnb. She rented a house for a few days in Roque Bluff. When I realized paying half would be about the same cost as camping, I asked if I could take the couch. So we were roomies for two night.

Despite being fifty miles north of the touristy Bar Harbor area, there were quite a few motels in the Machias area. So finding a place to stay should not be a problem.

Captain Andy (no I don't know his last name)

The boat trip-

As I said, the cost is $160, with half paid up front. The trip last between 4-5.5 hours. The goal is to land on Machias Seal Island and go to the blinds. Inside the blinds, you photograph Puffins, Murres, and Razorbills for a little more than an hour. Assuming you make it that far, the birds can be as close as three feet. Some may even land on the roof of your blind.

The boat does not leave at a set time everyday. The time is tide, wind, and weather dependent. Our trip went out at 11 am. The Wednesday trip left Cutler at 9 am and the trip on Friday was scheduled for noon.

If you read any part of this post please remember the following- Bold Coast Charters does not guarantee island landings. If sea conditions are unfavorable THEY DO NOT LAND! I can assure you Captain Andy knows how badly the paying customers want to land and see Puffins close up, but he errs on the side of caution. If he feels island landings are unsafe, he will not risk it. The cost is the same for landings or not since he can not predict the weather. I don't know what the ratio of successful landings are in a given year. However, thanks to the big storm in the Atlantic, they had not put passengers on the island in a week!

Common Murre, notice the chocolate
colored head

Our trip

Now that I got all of the logistics I could think of out of the way, it is far more fun to tell my first hand experience.-

We met a few minutes before 11 am at Cutler Harbor. Parking is tight, but it is also allowed on street. Captain Andy met us with a little skiff to get us out to the Barbara Frost. As usual on these kind of trips, he went over what to expect, safety instructions, and a little history. We got on the main boat and took the main boat to Machias Seal Island. The trip is ten miles and took 45-50 minutes to get there.

The boat had fourteen paying customers (one cancellation). Of the fourteen, Sue and I were the only birders!!! The other twelve people were photographers. Not really even birders that enjoy photography (like Sue and I), How do I know this? Well, Sue asked a couple people if they were birders or photographers and they replied photographers. But here was what got me, NONE OF THE OTHER TWELVE PASSENGERS EVEN BROUGHT BINOCULARS! They brought fancy camera equipment but they didn't bring bins. Captain Andy had three spare bins for people to borrow, and none of them took him up on it.

Anyway, Sue and I birded the entire ride from Cutler to Machias Seal Island. We were rewarded with twenty two Wilson's Storm Petrels (exact count of those seen) and a Leach's Storm Petrel! Leach's is a rare bird and a lifer for Sue. Once we got closer to the island we had flyover Razorbills, Puffins, and Murres. For the ride over though, the Leach's was the star of the show.

Razorbill

Once we arrived at Machias Seal Island, Capt. Andy was cautiously optimistic we could land. However we did not land right away. He wanted the tide to ebb some more which should make the waves smaller. As we waited for the tide to drop we had alcids fairly close to the boat. We saw hundreds up on the rocks of the island. We circled the island very slowly and had birds all around. We also saw some seals. Most important to me, we saw some Arctic Terns flying. They were a lifer for me. Though they were too far away for a decent photo, I was happy to see them.

After about an hour, Andy got in the little dingy alone and motored over to the island to see if we could safely land. He came back so quickly that I was sure it was a no. But when he pulled right up to the side of the boat he gave us a thumbs up. The dingy only holds a few people so it took three trips to motor the fourteen of us and his two mates (Abby and Levi)

Once we were all on shore Levi walked us to the blinds in two groups. Each blind holds 3-4 people. Sue and I got put in a blind with a guy named Brian from Ohio. It worked out for Sue and I because we only had to share our blind with one other person. But it also worked out really well for Brian because we were willing to share our camera holes and rotate so we all had different angles for photos.

The birds were only feet from us. The majority of birds in front of us were Razorbills. There was a large group of Common Murres directly in front of our blind but too far away to get photos of single birds. I took a few dozen photos of the Murres but mostly I concentrated on Puffins and Razorbills since some were within spitting distance.

Razorbills were everywhere around us. Dozens were sitting on rocks and sunning themselves, fighting, or chattering. The Puffins came and went. They didn't stay around too long. One would fly in, hop around on some rocks, then go down to its burrow. Though there weren't as many puffins as Razorbills, there was usually one for each of us to shoot at any given time.

The "Money shot" of a puffin is to get a photo of a Puffin with fish in its beak to feed its chicks. We saw few birds with fish in their mouth. I saw one Razorbill and one Murre. There were a couple Puffins that came back with fish. But they moved so quickly to the burrows that getting a photo was proving fruitless for all of us. About ten minutes before we had to leave a puffin flew in right next to the blind with some fish. It landed on a rock within feet of me, and I had the best angle to see it. I shot off about seven photos in five seconds then I pulled Sue into my spot and she did the same. After her five seconds were up, She moved over so Brian could get the money shot. Did I mention how incredibly lucky Brian was to be in the blind with us? Oh, that's right, I did. Needless to say, Sue and I were stoked and we high fived.

Ten minutes later, Levi came and got us, but not before seeing a single Northern Gannet that has been hanging around the island. Levi walked us back to the boat stopping at the helicopter pad so people could use the outhouse. This was awesome because Arctic Terns nest in the mowed grass and are within two feet of the pathway. Nowhere else will I ever get an easier photo of an Arctic Tern.

Capt Andy took us back to the boat in three trips again. Talking with others, and overhearing conversations, it seems like we lucked out with the Puffin with fish in its mouth. One of the blinds didn't have any puffins land at all with fish. Despite having to wait three years to go on this trip, it was well worth the wait. The weather was perfect and the birds were awesome. We all went back to Cutler with full memory cards and a memory to last a life time. Some of us even had binoculars to put back in our cars.

Many photos below-