We paddled 17 miles to see puffins on a Maine island

We paddled 17 miles to see puffins on a Maine island

This story was originally published in July 2023. Eastern Egg Rock, a tiny, seemingly nondescript, barren atoll located in outer Muscongus Bay, is one of a handful of locations along the Maine coast where Atlantic puffins come to nest. But it hasn’t always been that way. The colorful seabirds stopped returning to the rock around 1890. A variety of circumstances had driven them from their natural roosting habitat. Until 1973, there was no reason …