Puffin season is back on the Oregon coast.
The beautiful, beloved tufted puffins are expected back at Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach, where the 2026 Welcome the Puffins Celebration will take place from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. April 18.
Organized by the Haystack Rock Awareness Program and Friends of Haystack Rock, the free event will not only celebrate the return of the puffins to their Oregon nesting grounds but also give the public the chance to spy on the birds as well. Interpretive rangers will be on hand with binoculars and spotting scopes to help people safely observe the tufted puffins.
The event will also feature a tufted puffin activity table and the interactive Tufted Puffin Predator Game, where children learn about the natural and human-caused challenges puffins face while raising their young, organizers said.
Tufted puffins, one of several species of puffins, are known for the distinctive yellow tufts that grow from their heads. The species lives along the north Pacific coast, with breeding grounds primarily found off the coast of Alaska and British Columbia, according to the National Audubon Society. The birds are found less commonly on the Washington, Oregon and northern California coastlines.
Haystack Rock is one of the tufted puffins’ regular roosts and has become the best place in Oregon to see the birds, with easy access to the sea stack, especially at low tide. A bigger nesting site a half mile offshore at Three Arch Rocks near Oceanside is much harder to observe.
Puffins return to roosting sites alongside their lifelong mates, where they lay their eggs in burrows. Both males and females take turns incubating the eggs until they hatch, about 43 days later. Newly hatched puffins, called pufflings, can be seen at Haystack Rock from late June through early August. Pufflings leave their burrows a month or two after hatching, flying off under the cover of darkness to avoid the preying eyes of bald eagles.
However, tufted puffins have been disappearing from Oregon’s shores at an alarming rate, according to the Bird Alliance of Oregon, dropping from nearly 5,000 in 1998 to only 553 in 2021. The decline is likely due to a variety of causes, including warming ocean temperatures, reduced fish populations, pollution and invasive species, the organization said.
“As important as it is that we continue taking action to protect tufted puffins in Oregon, it’s equally important for people to understand why protecting this remarkable seabird matters,” Katherine Luscher, the tufted puffin conservation coordinator with Audubon’s Seabird Institute, said in a news release. “Events like Welcome the Puffins help build community support for conservation — plus, it’s impossible not to smile when you see one of Oregon’s iconic seabirds.”
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