It’s the Second Annual Maine Seabird Celebration!

“Seabird games” and book-signing by award-winning author and illustrator among activities Saturday, July 7 at Project Puffin Visitor Center

ROCKLAND, Maine, June 28, 2007—Only on Saturday, July 7 at the Second Annual Maine Seabird Celebration will children and families have the chance this summer to play “seabird games” led by popular environmental educators “Puffin Pete” Salmansohn and “Seabird Sue” Schubel. And that’s an opportunity not to be missed!

In addition to games for children, the Second Annual Maine Seabird Celebration offers activities for all ages from 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. at Rockland’s Project Puffin Visitor Center on Main Street and the corner park half a block from the center. The celebration originates from grand-opening-day festivities at the center last summer.

• 10:30 a.m.: Welcome by Dr. Stephen Kress, director of Audubon’s Seabird Restoration Program and Project Puffin.
• 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.: Seabird games—“Pass the Egg,” Puffin Grub,” and “Seaweed Search,” among them—with Seabird Sue and Puffin Pete; photo opportunities with “Captain Puffin;” and continuous opportunities to tour the visitor center and see its new photo exhibit on penguins and its fascinating documentary about bringing puffins back to Eastern Egg Rock island.
• 12:30-1:30 p.m.: Award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Gail Gibbons will read from and sign her book, “The Puffins are Back!
• 1:30-2:30 p.m.: Dr. Kress and other Audubon researchers will give an illustrated talk about their teams’ unique work protecting seabirds and shorebirds on Maine beaches and islands.
• 2:45 p.m.: Celebrate Project Puffin Visitor Center’s second season with cake and a grand-prize raffle drawing.

Project Puffin was launched by the National Audubon Society in 1973 to learn how to restore puffins to historic nesting islands in the Gulf of Maine. Today, the successful restoration techniques Project Puffin has pioneered are used to aid more than 40 birds species in 12 countries.
Gail Gibbons has written and illustrated more than 100 hundred informational books for children that have been described as “the kind of books young children pore over.” She was awarded the prestigious Washington Post Children's Book Guild Award for overall contribution to children's nonfiction. Gail lives with her husband in Vermont and Maine.

Susan Schubel and Pete Salmansohn wear many hats, as the saying goes. A Bremen resident, Schubel is a biologist, artist, and teacher who, with her husband, also is a year-round caretaker-in-residence at Todd Audubon Sanctuary in Bremen. Salmansohn, an award-winning author who co-wrote How We Brought Puffins Back to Egg Rock with Dr. Kress, is well known as the naturalist whose lively narration is a highlight of the Audubon “puffin cruises” departing regularly throughout the summer from New Harbor.

Schubel and Salmansohn collaborate during the school year to present the award-winning Seabird Education Program that Project Puffin developed for school children.

“Maine seabirds are an excellent starting point for exploring broad issues such as marine conservation,” Schubel said. “By learning about birds like the charismatic puffin and globe-trotting tern, children become interested in the whole ocean environment, and how birds and other creatures survive there.”

Project Puffin Visitor Center is a joint project of the National Audubon Society and Maine Audubon. Located at 311 Main Street in Rockland, and is open daily from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. through October. The center offers visitors a place to learn about Audubon's Project Puffin and other seabird-conservation projects in Maine, and to find out where and how to see Maine birds and other wildlife. Among the center’s diverse exhibits is a continuous, big-screen Web broadcast of real-time images and sounds of puffins transmitted by a robotic on-island “puffin cam” on Maine’s Seal Island. Visitors can operate the camera remotely from the center. The visitor center attracted more than 10,000 people in its opening season, summer 2006.

To learn more about Project Puffin Visitor Center, please call (207) 596-5566 or visit www.projectpuffin.org.

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