While Cannon Beach’s Haystack Rock is the only place in the contiguous U.S. to see tufted puffins from the shore in the wild, bird lovers wanting a closer look can head down the highway to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

Thank you for your interest in reading The Astorian. Here are a few stories that you might have missed this week:

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Researchers are looking to fill gaps in understanding tufted puffins.

Last summer, the colony count at Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach was the lowest it had ever been since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began monitoring: only 74 puffins. A concerning number given the marked decline of tufted puffins off the Oregon Coast — and along their entire southern range — in recent years.

Advocates were prepared for more disappointing news this fall as the puffins’ breeding season ended and the birds began to leave the rock. But Fish and Wildlife Service biologists estimated the colony’s population at 106 birds.

Shawn Stephensen, a wildlife biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the number comes with some caveats. The bottom line is that the increase observed this summer is not significant.

“It’s a slight increase,” Stephensen said, “and that’s the best way to put it.”

See the story by Katie Frankowicz of our news partner KMUN by clicking here.

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At Camp Rilea in Warrenton, a military kitchen is going beyond chow.

Olga Watkins, who works for Service Care of America, which the military base contracts for food service, took over management of the dining facility at Camp Rilea in the early part of 2021.

Watkins, who has worked in kitchens since she was a teenager, said that while military food has a reputation for being bland and simple, she and Tom Fink, a former bakery owner who also helps manage the account, are unwilling to compromise their standards as chefs.

In return, she said most military personnel are thankful and appreciative.

“And it doesn’t take much to do,” Watkins said. “But you have to want to produce food that’s going to make people happy. That’s what it boils down to.”

Read the story by Nicole Bales by clicking here.

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Eric Jensen has not given up.

For nearly 20 years, the Scappoose artist has tried to interest Astoria in a bronze statue of famed 19th century navigator and educator Ranald MacDonald.

Jensen said the idea came to him after completing an award-winning 7-foot-tall bronze statue of Ilchee, the daughter of Chinook Chief Comcomly and MacDonald’s aunt, for Vancouver, Washington, in the 1990s.

MacDonald, who was born in 1824 at Fort Astoria, is recognized as the first English teacher in Japan after the country had been closed off to the outside world for two centuries.

Through his research, Jensen believes MacDonald’s efforts enabled Japan to remain sovereign and to rapidly modernize and that his memory should be memorialized in Astoria.

Take a look at the report by Nicole Bales by clicking here.

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— Derrick DePledge