Each summer puffin parents return to their nesting colony and lay a single egg in an underground burrow; once it hatches, they dutifully catch and feed fish to their chick. When the chick is strong enough, it emerges from its burrow, leaves its parents behind, and braves life on the open ocean alone. After several years, it returns to its birthplace to find a mate and raise chicks of its own.

Stephen Kress and Project Puffin placed these wood carved puffin decoys on rocks to attract the return of fledgling puffins to the coast of Maine.“The birds quickly realize it’s not the real thing,” says Kress. “But it does give them a reason to land and then they become decoys for others. So the colony builds on itself that way.”