UNB researchers find 33-year-old puffin, marking a known record age for the bird

How old is an old puffin? 

Well, the oldest known puffin in New Brunswick — and Canada — was found this week at 33 years old. 

Researchers at the Atlantic Laboratory for Avian Research, through the University of New Brunswick, located the puffin born in 1992 on Machias Seal Island, located in the Gulf of Maine, with its original identification bands from over three decades ago. 

Daniel Oliker, a graduate student at the University of New Brunswick studying Atlantic puffin ecology, says he's confident saying this is the oldest puffin ever recaptured in the province — its first capture was when it was banded — and it's among the oldest across North America. 

"It's pretty significant and it's a unique piece of information to gather," Oliker said.

Records indicate the previous oldest was 29 years old, "so this one beats our record by four years which is pretty substantial." 

The research team has been monitoring puffins and five other species of seabirds, including  razorbills, common murres and Leach's storm petrels, on Machias Seal Island since 1995. 

Before that, Canada Wildlife Services had staff who lived on the island to oversee tourist landings, observe birds on the island and band puffin chicks. 

While researchers today use two metal bands as identification markers, plastic bands were used for a couple of years after the research program began. 

When a researcher spotted a puffin wearing a plastic band earlier this week, Oliker said, the team knew it must be very old. 

They waited until dark, when puffins are more likely to be in their burrows, and then went searching.

"We grubbed a bunch of burrows," Oliker said. "That just means sticking your hand in the burrow and looking for the bird.  And then I felt something that didn't feel like a metal band on a bird's leg, but a plastic one …  so I pulled it out.

"Lo and behold, it was a plastic one, and this band was really cool because it was extremely worn out, the most worn-out band I've ever seen."  

Oliker said numbers on the band were still legible, and it was determined this puffin was last seen in 2007. 

"Just being able to find that bird, kind of getting lucky getting to the right burrow and actually making out what the band number said was a bit of luck," he said.

"It was very exciting, it's always fun to get those old birds and see their history."  

Tony Diamond, who started the Machias Seal Island research program 30 years ago and so, said this find shows how driven that group of researchers is, because of how difficult that identification band would have been to read. 

He said this find alone just expanded the length of this research project in entirety by several years, so it's significant. 

"It's not just a measure of how long the puffins live, it's a measure of how long that research has been going," Diamond said.

"It's very exciting that they caught that bird, and it speaks highly of their motivation." 

Oliker said the puffin now sports a new metal band, so researchers on the island can continue monitoring it for years to come. 

He said this kind of information is important to understand the longevity and lifespan of puffins, how many chicks they can rear in their lifetime, and how they've fared through environmental changes. 

"Being born in 1992, [this puffin] has gone through a lot in its lifetime, especially in the last 20 years or so, with the sort of drastic changes in the environment," Oliker said. 

"It's still able to raise chicks and hopefully raise successful chicks, and it's still alive. So it tells us a lot about how hardy and persistent these birds are."