Seabird researchers report good year for razorbills and puffins

MAINE MONITOR • September 16, 2026

There was a record-setting story to tell this summer on Seal Island about razorbills, chunky black-and-white birds that stand about 16 inches tall. Razorbills are cousins of Atlantic puffins and the closest living relative to the extinct great auk. There is no official record of razorbills having historically nested on Seal Island. They were hunted to the extent that Arthur Herbert Norton, a leading expert of Maine’s natural history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, saw no razorbills in the state from 1894 to 1923. Seal Island saw a record 127 razorbill nests this year, while Eastern Egg Rock saw a record 213 puffin burrows.