Puffin makes rare trip to Rhode Island and Massachusetts
GLOCESTER, R.I. (WLNE) — A puffin, a unique visitor to Southern New England, was found in Wrentham on Saturday and soon made its way to Glocester.
From great horned owls to red-tailed hawks, bird rehabilitator Sheida Soleimani has seen just about every local species you can imagine.
On Oct. 4, her Rhode Island-based organization, Congress of the Birds, got a call from Wrentham that surprised her.
“A friend of mine who runs a wild bird rehab center a little north of Boston, messaged me late on Saturday night with the photo being like, ‘Hey, are you willing to take this? I think it could be a puffin,'” Soleimani said.
She asked for a photo and confirmed it was a young Atlantic puffin.
“Puffins are deep sea birds,” Soleimani said. “They’re oceanic birds. They’re never supposed to be on land. Except for when they’re at their breeding colonies, which are usually islands in the middle of the ocean, which Wrentham is not.”
A member of Soleimani’s team went to pick up the puffin and brought him to her wildlife refuge in Glocester.
“We’ve been tube feeding him the past few days his way,” Soleimani said. “His weight’s been stable. He came in at a really great weight at first. Didn’t really show too much interest in live food, but today he’s been diving and been to feeding quite a bit.”
Soleimani said Congress of the Birds is the only wild bird-specific rehabilitation center in the state.
“We’re trained in making sure that these birds get the care that they need,” she said. “They have very special dietary requirements, medicine needs, they need exams and triages.”
But Soleimani said the puffin was one of her most unique cases ever.
“It’s like kind of this kind of balance of, okay, something’s wrong with this bird,” she said. “We don’t know if it’s going to live or not, but we were all absolutely, really excited to get him into our care.”
Soleimani added that the plan was to release the bird on Oct. 11.
They’ll be taking a trip out to Provincetown, where they’ll catch a boat and deliver the puffin back to the ocean.
