OPAS Backyard Birding series will spotlight puffins
Published 1:30 am Friday, April 10, 2026
The next installment of the Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society’s Backyard Birding series will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15 at the Dungeness River Nature Center, 1943 W. Hendrickson Road in Sequim. Katie Stoner, a PhD candidate at Oregon State University, will present “Beyond the Burrow — Secret Lives of Puffins Across the North Pacific.”
Imagine yourself crawling through tall grass, covered in mud, reaching into long dark tunnels and hoping to find the soft feathers of a puffin before meeting the snap of its powerful bill. Those same birds, with their bright beaks, golden tufts, and striking “horns,” draw people from around the world to see the beloved “clowns of the sea.” But behind the charm are fierce marine predators, navigating rapid environmental change, with an uncertain future.
Travel with Stoner to the Kodiak Archipelago of Alaska and join her team as they track puffins across vast winter migrations and work to uncover threats shaping their conservation. Gain insights as Stoner shares findings from her PhD research begun in 2021 at Oregon State University in collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — research focused primarily on evaluating population trends, winter migrations, and conservation threats for tufted and horned puffins from Kodiak Island.
