field work – From the top: Predators, Oceans & Ecosystems

June 9, 2026June 12, 2026

Yaquina Head Early Season Update, Summer 2026

By Will Kennerley, Faculty Research Assistant

On the morning of May 9^th, I drove out to Yaquina Head and walked to the overlook at the base of the 93′ light tower. Thousands of murres were already on the rocks and buzzing around like so many bees, cormorants were flying back and forth with mouths full of nesting material, and oystercatchers chased one another across the intertidal rocks. This day was like so many others yet was notable for kicking off our 20^th consecutive season of seabird monitoring at Yaquina Head (and 25^th overall!).

Twenty years sure feels like a long time; after all, when monitoring was revived in 2007 under the direction of then-OSU Professor Rob Suryan, Rhianna’s “Umbrella” was dominating the airwaves, the very first iPhones were being released, and George W Bush was still in the White House. About 60% of murres that season reproduced successfully, a percentage we haven’t managed to reach in the last decade. Amazingly, given the relatively long lifespans of murres and other alcids, some of the chicks from that season are almost certainly still with us, breeding this very year at the colony!

Over this time we’ve seen a number of changing influences on Yaquina Head’s birds, most especially rising avian predator predation and the occurrence of several severe marine heatwaves. Yet, over all this time our methodology has remained essentially unchanged and many of the same rocks and subcolonies are still being monitored. This gives us the incredible ability to effectively document and quantify changes in seabird vital rates over a relatively long timespan, helping us learn how Oregon’s seabirds are adapting to a changing world.

After a month of monitoring, it seems like it’s set to be an early year, particularly for cormorants. Brandt’s Cormorants were already starting to lay eggs by May 12^th and Pelagics were doing so just a week later. Assuming standard incubation periods of 30 days for both species^1,2, it’s likely we’ll start to see our first cormorant chicks hatching at the end of the week. In many years, median hatch dates for both species aren’t until early-mid July, suggesting we could be several weeks earlier than in a “typical” year!

Two Brandt's cormorants on nests — Brandt’s Cormorants seem poised to have an exceptionally early year, with the first nests being laid a week or two earlier than the norm. The first chicks at Yaquina Head may hatch within a few days.

However, there’s also evidence of two distinct waves of cormorant nesting this year at both the Yaquina Head and Pirate Cove colonies. Many early nesting attempts in mid-May (particularly at the more exposed sub-colonies) were subjected to extensive eagle disturbance and were kept empty while those at more protected sites nearby were already incubating. Eagle disturbance tends to decline over the course of the summer and cormorants established more widely by early June. Because of this, I suspect we’ll see some exceptionally early chicks but perhaps the median hatch date that we calculate every year won’t be quite so dramatically different from normal.

Although cormorants show great variation in the timing of nest initiation between years, we haven’t seen evidence of an obvious change towards earlier or later nesting. Murres, in contrast, have been nesting later and later in recent years at Yaquina Head; whereas chicks in the 1990s and early 2000s hatched mostly in late June, we typically don’t see our first chicks until mid July now. At present, murres are occupying nest sites at both Yaquina Head and Pirate Cove, yet only in the last week or so have eggs begun to appear.

A large number of common murres standing on a rock. — Common Murres have been occupying the rocks at Yaquina Head on and off for several months now, but only recently have they begun to lay eggs. When Rob Suryan reinstated the Yaquina Head monitoring work in 2007, murres would have been well into the incubation period by now.

The timing of reproduction can be incredibly important when there are great seasonal differences in local productivity³. When breeding phenology more closely aligns with peaks in local productivity, animals may be more successful in raising young since the period of peak food demand will match the period of peak food abundance⁴. This is important as spring plankton blooms change, the timing of trees leafing out advances, and other climate change-induced phenological changes affect seemingly every ecosystem on earth.

Less predictable changes to local productivity may also be mediated by the timing of reproduction. This year, I’m particularly intrigued to see how the early nesting of some of our cormorants will align/misalign with the impacts of the major El Niño event currently developing in the equatorial Pacific. The coastal upwelling that drives marine productivity in the California Current tends to be reduced during El Niño events, so that El Niño years tend to be marked by seabird breeding failures and reduced adult survival rates⁵. If cormorants can raise and fledge chicks before the impacts of El Niño are felt here in Oregon, they could still reproduce successfully. Alternatively, if waters warm and productivity is reduced while chicks are still nest-bound, they may be abandoned by starving adults and die in the nest.

Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperature Animation — Higher sea surface temperatures (oranges and reds) are covering increasing areas of the equatorial Pacific. Models predict an 82% probability of transition to ENSO positive (El Niño) conditions in the coming months. Graphic courtesy of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/enso.shtml).

Events like El Niño are constantly occurring throughout the world’s oceans and act as fascinating “natural experiments” for researchers to better understand how seabirds interact with, and are impacted by, their environments. The responses of birds may also vary in response to seemingly trivial differences in the timing, severity, geographic extent, or duration of these events, making it challenging to accurately predict their impacts. We never really know what kind of season we have ahead of us, but it’s this mystery that keeps us excited each spring to begin monitoring at Yaquina Head again, 20 long years in a row.

References

¹ Hobson, K. A. (2021). Pelagic Cormorant (Urile pelagicus), version 1.1. In Birds of the World (Editor not available). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA.

²Wallace, E. A. and G. E. Wallace (2021). Brandt’s Cormorant (Urile penicillatus), version 1.1. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole and F. B. Gill, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA.

³ Lack, D. (1950). The breeding seasons of European birds. Ibis, 92(2), 288-316.

⁴ Thomas, D. W., Blondel, J., Perret, P., Lambrechts, M. M., & Speakman, J. R. (2001). Energetic and fitness costs of mismatching resource supply and demand in seasonally breeding birds. Science, 291(5513), 2598-2600.

⁵ Ainley & Boekelheide. 1990. Seabirds of the Farallon Islands: Ecology, Structure, and Dynamics of an Upwelling System Community. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, USA.

November 12, 2024April 15, 2025

“Professional Puffin Paparazzi”: Photographing Tufted Puffins at Haystack Rock

By Eliza Wesemann, Summer 2024 Tufted Puffin Bill Load Photography Technician

Pacific Herring, sardine, larval fish, salmon, smelt, squid, and lamprey. What do these ocean creatures have in common? They were all on the Tufted Puffin’s menu this summer, and this season the puffins ate like kings. My name is Eliza Wesemann, and this summer I worked for OSU’s Seabird Oceanography Lab as a Tufted Puffin Bill Load Photographer at Oregon’s iconic Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach.

**Eliza Wesemann, summer technician for the Seabird Oceanography Lab, photographs Tufted Puffins at Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, Oregon**

A little bit about me – I am a senior studying wildlife ecology and management at Utah State University. I am originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, and am pursuing a career focused on wildlife conservation and research. Over the years I have aided research projects on a variety of different species including Pinyon Jays, Greater Sage-Grouse, Mountain Goats, and American Pika, but Tufted Puffins hold a special place in my heart for their outrageously cute appearance and mannerisms.

Tufted Puffins are little black football-shaped birds with two long white/yellow eyebrow tufts, and a bright orange beak and webbed feet – in other words, a very silly looking bird! The Tufted Puffin population is thriving further north in Alaska, but they are struggling in the southern part of their range, from southern British Columbia to Northern California. Historically, Haystack Rock supported the second largest Tufted Puffin breeding colony in Oregon, with an estimate of 400 breeding birds in 1978. However, recent work by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report, the Haystack Rock population has dropped to just 102 breeding birds in 2024¹.

**The decline of Tufted Puffins at Haystack Rock over 1978 to 2024**
(data from Naughton et al. 2007 and USFWS, unpublished)

Reflecting this decline, Tufted Puffins are listed as ‘Endangered’ in Washington state, ‘Sensitive’ in Oregon, and a ‘Species of Special Concern’ in California. Efforts to list the bird as federally Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act have unfortunately fallen short, as the Species Status Assessment came to the conclusion that the listing is “not warranted” despite the decline of coastal colonies throughout the southern range².

Haystack Rock is 236 feet tall, with steep grassy slopes home to all sorts of species of seabird nesting and rearing young. Beyond Tufted Puffins, Pigeon Guillemots, Black Oystercatchers, Western Gulls, Brandt’s and Pelagic Cormorants, Common Murres, and Rhinoceros Auklets all call Haystack their home during the summer months. While most seabirds nest on the open slope, Tufted Puffins have earthen burrows hidden among the grass, making it difficult to keep track of active burrows and breeding pairs. In the recent Oregon Fish and Wildlife Monitoring Study, they found an estimated 51 occupied burrows with 102 breeding birds.

**A Tufted Puffin returns to its burrow on Haystack Rock’s grassy slopes among nesting Common Murres**

My goal was essentially to document the diet of Tufted Puffins by taking pictures (using a Sony A9 camera with 200-600mm lens) anytime I spotted a puffin with fish. I did the same for murres and pigeon guillemots with bill loads as well when the opportunity arose. Although the Tufted Puffins were generally the most active from sunrise to noon, their feeding schedules and Haystack appearances were elusive and inconsistent, often hard to predict. The puffins could be active and visible on the rock or in air flying laps, but not feeding; or completely hidden away in their burrows only leaving to collect fish, depending on the day. I made sure to be stationed at Haystack every morning to make sure to catch the puffins on their good eating days, as they were unpredictable.

My day-to-day schedule would be to wake up an hour before sunrise, prepare the camera and make my way down to the rock just as it was bright enough to shoot images. I would adjust the settings to the conditions of the day, stand as close as I could get to the rock given the tide, stare at the horizon, and wait until a puffin flew in towards the rock. In the time it took to spot a puffin, haul up my camera and zero in on the bird, they had often already disappeared into their burrows! Otherwise, they might fly an absurdly long lap around the rock, seemingly displaying their fish proudly! It was usually hard to tell if they had fish in their beak until after I had already taken the picture, so I would end the day sorting through hundreds of images of puffins in flight with only a small portion carrying bill loads of fish.

One of the more difficult skills I learned over the summer was distinguishing puffins approaching distantly from the sea from the other seabirds, which was even harder if the weather was overcast. Without the sun to illuminate the tell-tale white belly of the murre, the red feet of the Pigeon Guillemot and the orange glint of the puffin’s beak, the sky becomes a whirling mass of unidentifiable black flapping specks. In those moments, I would rely on the fact that puffins are slightly larger and darker against a gray sky, and hope for the best.

One of the most exciting highlights of the season was the feeding frenzy on July 23rd, where I captured a whopping 131 individual puffin bill loads on the camera. It was a very rare moment where the three variables of good puffin photos overlapped; low tide, partly cloudy but not overcast, and high puffin activity. I couldn’t put the camera down; the sky was filled with puffins with fish. Most puffins were bringing in multiple large smelt at a time, suggesting these fishes were just offshore, perhaps in a spawning aggregation. A few puffins were visibly rounder after that day – they evidently ate like kings!

**A Tufted Puffin with a bill filled with smelt flies back to feed its chick during the July 23rd feeding frenzy**

At Haystack, I had the opportunity to network with other wildlife photographers about “Birds with Fish”, a citizen science project exploring the diets of Oregon coastal birds using community-sourced, non-invasive photography. One of the highlights while working at Cannon Beach was engaging in side conversations with fellow photographers about puffins, conservation, and life in general. Helping visitors tourists identify puffins from Murres, introducing the ‘Birds with Fish’ initiative, and general wildlife public education were other valuable aspects of the position that I looked forward to during fieldwork.

Another highlight of the season was assisting Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists with their burrow counts of the puffins on Cannon Beach. Together, we tag-teamed the process: I pointed out puffins and tracked them into their burrows, then marked on a map the area of the rock the puffins flew into. It was exciting to be able to contribute the skills I learned over the season for research to uncover more about the Tufted Puffins at Haystack Rock.

Puffins have always held a special place in my heart, as I initially became passionate about wildlife conservation from photographing Atlantic Puffins during a trip in Iceland five years ago. So, this position was a perfect culmination of my interests–wildlife research and photography–an incredibly valuable ecological research experience, and all while experiencing the beautiful Oregon coast.

I would like to thank Dr. Rachael Orben and Will Kennerley at OSU’s Seabird Oceanography Lab for the amazing opportunity, as well as Friends of Haystack Rock and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for the support at Haystack Rock. This was a dream job and an experience I’ll never forget.

Acknowledgments: The Oregon Wildlife Foundation provided funding to support field work in 2024. The Friends of Haystack Rock supported this project by providing housing in Cannon Beach. Thank you!

Stephensen, S.W. 2024. Tufted Puffin monitoring study at Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon 2010-2024. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Unpublished Report, Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex, Newport, Oregon 97365. 35 pp. ↩︎
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service). 2020. Species Status Assessment Report for the Tufted Puffin (Fratercula cirrhata), Version 1.0. Anchorage Fish and Wildlife Office, Anchorage, Alaska. ↩︎

July 4, 2023July 6, 2023

Linking Rivers to the Sea(birds): Initial Surveys of River Otter Predation on Leach’s Storm-Petrels

By Eleanor Gnam, Seasonal Field Technician

The southern Oregon coast, between Port Orford to the north and Brookings to the south, hosts the largest colonies of Leach’s Storm-Petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous) in the lower-48. Goat Island, half a mile offshore from Harris Beach State Park, is estimated to host more than 100,000 of these small, dusky-colored seabirds. But looking at the island from the shore, you might never know that they’re there.

Leach’s Storm-Petrels

Leach’s Storm-Petrels, which top out at just under 50 grams at the heaviest, return to their colonies only at night, and nest in underground burrows hidden beneath mats of long grass. Beachgoers who are in the know might be made aware of the colony from the distinctive, musky odor that petrels are famous for—which is strong enough to waft ashore—but otherwise, the colony is practically invisible from more than a few inches above the ground.

LHSPs feed on zooplankton and other planktonic creatures far out to sea, and only return to their colonies under the cover of darkness. During the breeding season, members of breeding pairs will take turns incubating their single egg or chick in the burrow, sometimes remaining underground for four or five days, while the other member of the pair forages. This cryptic, nocturnal behavior likely provides protection against diurnal avian predators. Southern Oregon’s LHSP colonies are close enough to shore, however, that nocturnal mammalian predators can pose a threat.

Project Goals

In collaboration with the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, Luke Stuntz (MSc student, Seabird Oceanography Lab) and I (Eleanor Gnam, seasonal field tech) are investigating the impact of mammalian predators (mainly North American River Otters Lontra canadensis) on southern Oregon’s Leach’s Storm-Petrels.

We’re seeking to understand how, where, when, and to what extent these predators use petrels as a food source—knowledge that will help inform potential predator management in the future. River otters tend to operate either in loose social groups of unrelated males or in family units of a mother and her cubs. We’re hoping that our research will help us understand the social organizations of the river otters that are using these islands, as well.

A river otter captured via game camera on Goat Island

Field Work (May-June)

Luke began fieldwork for this project in May, with trips to our focal islands to survey for predator sign and set up motion-activated game cameras. Two of the four islands showed definite signs of predator activity (trampling, scat, and prey remains). Cameras on Goat Island quickly revealed activity from multiple social groups of river otters, including a pair of adults and a female with cubs. Because river otters commute between these islands and the mainland, surveys along the coastline are also important for monitoring their activity.

Luke’s initial surveys in May and early June revealed quite a bit of predator activity along the beaches and creeks near these colonies. River otters tend to deposit scat in shared, regularly-used locations called latrines, which aid territory marking and scent-based communication between individuals. They also need to return to freshwater sources frequently, especially after swimming in the ocean, both to drink and to groom their fur. The scat found in the latrines near our focal islands definitely contained digested storm-petrel remains—obvious from the distinct odor.

A game camera deployed over a creek near one of our latrine sites

On June 15^th, we moved into OSU’s Port Orford Field Station to commence full-time fieldwork on the project. Our first step was to revisit the coastline sites near our colony islands and to check out some new sites with the potential to be good river otter habitat. We were surprised by how little fresh river otter activity we found at some of our sites that were very active in May and early June. We’re also seeing them on our game cameras less often than before.

We found evidence of recent activity in several new locations, though, and we continue to see a lot of activity on the beach closest to Goat Island. This raises questions about how frequent and how seasonal these island-going behaviors might be. We’re also starting to wonder about the impact of Route 101 and its associated culverts on river otters’ use of coastal streams. Continuing predator sign surveys throughout the summer, both along the coast and on our colony islands, will help fill in our picture of this predator-prey dynamic and will help us understand how much of a problem it might be for these seabird colonies. We’re planning to expand our predator sign surveys up some of the larger creeks and rivers in the area, as well, using an inflatable sea kayak.