CCLCS News: Leading Ornithologist Visits School - by Jackson Niles

Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School News

Monday, March 7, the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School was honored to have one of the world's leading ornithologists, Dr. Stephen Kress, visit the school. Kress is the vice president of the bird conservation for the National Audubon Society and is a leading pioneer in the field of sea bird restorations. He was in the area to do a presentation for Cape Cod Museum of Natural History.

Almost 30 years ago, Kress proved to a dubious ornithological community, by performing the first successful restoration of an entire island's population of puffins, that sea bird restoration was not only possible, but very practical. The site he chose for his first restoration project was a small island off the coast of Maine called Egg Island. The island was far enough offshore that it didn't have problems with cats or other mammals that would eat birds. At the time he started the project there were no puffins. Several years earlier it had harbored a large puffin population. The island's history, combined with its isolation, convinced Kress that it was a good location for puffin restoration. He first relocated several immature puffins from Canada to the island, hoping they would remember the place where they grew up and come back to live there when they were adults. He banded all of the small puffins and several years later saw them again in the waters around the island. To attract birds onto the island, Kress put artificial puffins, mirrors and sound boxes on the island. The strategy worked, attracting real flesh and blood puffins. They attracted more puffins, and their population slowly but steadily increased over the years, eventually reaching historical levels.

Kress and other scientists have now used this same strategy for many other islands and different types of birds in many countries. Among his success stories, Kress relocated the last of a very rare species of albatross living on a dormant volcano and repopulated a rock that was home to hundreds of murres until they were killed in an oil spill.

Kress gave a presentation to the entire sixth grade and an additional lecture to a select group of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders. He gave a fascinating slide show that detailed his work. This information was particularly relevant and enlightening to students in the school's birding group led by science teacher Peter Trull, who is also a renowned ornithologist.

- Written by Jackson Niles, a seventh-grader at Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School.