Puffin Run

For the third year in a row, I went on a bird trip hosted by Puget Sound Express. This was my second time going out on their puffin trip — their other trip chases fall migrating birds and is run a couple of times in October. This was the first trip on their larger Port Townsend boat, the Saratoga, which can carry about 150 people, and it was 95% full. This was my second trip out to Smith Island, which is a protected area off of Whidbey island almost halfway to Lopez Island, and one of the major breeding locations for birds like Puffins (the other, Protection Island, is closer but Puffin populations have been shrinking there over the last number of years). It’s a fast cruise out, and then a slow circuit of the island and its smaller partner, Minor Island, to see what we can see, and the complete trip takes about two hours. We were not disappointed, with maybe as many as 12 puffins seen as well as many other species — my list for the day totaled 17. None of them were new to me — and…