Tufted puffin at Haystack Rock Cannon Beach
— — an orange bill and white face above two hundred feet of black stone.
Not only on a wall.
“A 235-foot sea stack on the north Oregon coast, just offshore at Cannon Beach. From about April through July, tufted puffins nest in burrows on the grassy crown, one of the few mainland-accessible colonies left on the West Coast. They are small black seabirds with white faces, bright orange bills, and pale yellow tufts that come in during breeding season. Numbers have fallen sharply over the last few decades, from hundreds of pairs to a much smaller count. The base of the rock is a protected marine garden; tide pools open at low tide and close again as the water comes back in.
Tufted puffin at Haystack Rock Cannon Beach, on ceramic.
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Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Haystack Rock rises 235 feet out of the sand just offshore from Cannon Beach, in Clatsop County on the north Oregon coast. It is a basalt sea stack, left behind when softer surrounding rock eroded away, and is part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The lower intertidal zone is also a designated Marine Garden, with tide pools open to careful visitors at low tide. The rock and its smaller neighbors, locally called the Needles, are closed to climbing year round, and the crown is protected as seabird nesting habitat.
Tufted puffins, Fratercula cirrhata, return to Haystack Rock to breed from around mid-April through late July. They dig burrows in the grassy soil on the crown of the rock, lay a single egg, and raise one chick before heading back out to sea for the winter. The Oregon coast population has declined sharply over the past several decades, by some estimates from more than 5,000 birds statewide in the 1980s to fewer than a thousand in recent surveys. Cannon Beach remains one of the easiest mainland viewing sites on the West Coast, and is one of the reasons the rock carries protected status.
The rock is reached on foot from the Cannon Beach town beach, about a ten-minute walk south of the main downtown access. At low tide, the base is exposed and a wide intertidal shelf opens around it; at high tide, the rock is surrounded by water. The Haystack Rock Awareness Program staffs interpretive volunteers with spotting scopes on most low-tide mornings from spring through summer, and puffins are easiest to see in early morning from late April into early July. A protected area at the base, marked by ropes and signs, is closed to foot traffic to keep nesting birds undisturbed.