Zoe Buchli’s article “Puffins rule supreme around Haystack Rock” (Discover Our Coast, June 26) is a welcome and generally fine report on these wonderful birds, but it contains two substantial errors. 

First, the birds identified in one photo’s caption as “cormorants” are actually the very different pigeon guillemots, a cousin to the tufted puffin. 

Second, the designation of river otters and bald eagles as “invasive species” is wildly wrong. Both of these creatures are fully indigenous to the Oregon coast, and neither may be considered an “invader” of our coastal habitats. 

They are both predators that could conceivably prey upon puffins, but to conflate them with unwanted exotic animals as “invasive species” is to seriously misuse both the term and the concept.

ROBERT M. PYLE

Grays River, Washington