Every summer for the past 12 years, Friends of Haystack Rock volunteer Tim Halloran has risen early to go to the beach and watch tufted puffins swoop, dive and nest above the vast blue backdrop of the Pacific Ocean.

A lifelong nature lover, Halloran recalled spending hours as a child looking for tadpoles and frogs in a swamp near his home in Chicago. Though he grew up in the city, he spent much of his time in museums and zoos, fostering his interest in local ecosystems and the wildlife inhabiting them.

Eventually, that interest grew into a career. After majoring in biology in college, Halloran became a biology teacher. And in 1969, when he took a field course from Western Illinois University, he found his niche: birding.

“It was a summer of camping and birding in the American Southwest, starting from Central Illinois,” he said. “And it was a real eye-opener to see all those different habitats and all the different birds, and it made a birder out of me.”

In 2010, Halloran and his wife moved to Oregon to be closer to their children. While becoming acquainted with the Friends of Haystack Rock, he learned about an opening for a volunteer specializing in tufted puffin data collection.

By 2012, he had filled the position and began to familiarize himself with the dozens of puffins that call Haystack Rock home.

“It was a real learning curve, because coming from the Midwest and going to school in the ’60s, I always said they hadn’t invented marine biology yet,” Halloran said. “But of course, they had, we just didn’t have it in central Illinois. So I had a lot of learning to do, which I absolutely loved, and it’s such a gorgeous environment and great staff. And the birds are endlessly fascinating.”

Beginning in mid-May each year, Halloran’s early mornings pass minute by minute as he numbers burrows and the amount and activity of the puffins around them. The data will tell researchers which burrows are occupied, which puffins are likely to have had a fledgling and the overall tufted puffin population on Haystack Rock.

“At the beginning of the season, it can get a little dull,” he said. “That’s when it’s helpful for me to have my spotting scope with me, because that attracts some attention. And then people will stop to ask me what I’m doing, and I’ll be able to show them a puffin if there’s one around.”

Around the middle of July, the pace picks up. From then until mid-August, Halloran watches a flurry of puffins coming and going, carrying fish and squid and krill to their young.

“That’s always exciting,” he said. “If you can spot one flying in, and then watch it until it enters a particular burrow, then you know that particular burrow has a puffling inside.

“It’s just a really cool bird. They have a very, very interesting way of living, moving out on the open ocean all the time, except when they come to breed … and, you know, to see them interacting with the other sea birds, there’s thousands of common murres and hundreds of Western gulls and quite a healthy population of bald eagles, and we see some exciting interactions with all of those.”

One of Halloran’s most striking memories is of a confrontation between a gull and a puffin. The gull, he said, grabbed the puffin by its tail in an attempt to steal some fish, and the two birds twirled in the air together as they plummeted from the sky.

“They went down behind one of the bigger rocks at the base of Haystack Rock,” he recalled. “So I was concerned. I thought, ‘man, they hit the ground.’ And I went over there and was talking to some of the volunteers, and before long, we saw them both fly off one at a time.”

Halloran’s last puffin watch for Friends of Haystack Rock was last August.

“You know, I’m getting older,” he said. “I’m 76, and getting up early is more and more of a chore. I will still be out there watching puffins just on my own from time to time, but I won’t have to do the whole protocol. And I think it’s time for someone younger to carry the torch, and there are efforts in the works to make that happen.”

Now, much of Halloran’s time is spent with his family at their home in Vancouver, Washington. He hasn’t started a new volunteer project yet, but said he would like to start looking into observing sage grouse in central Washington for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In the meantime, Halloran plans to go see the puffin population in Alaska.

“That’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “But I haven’t been able to, because I’m busy in Cannon Beach when the puffins are there in Alaska. So this summer, I’ll be able to do that.”