The last thing I want to do as a volunteer puffin patroller is run over a baby bird, so driving south out of Bay Bulls towards Witless Bay with my rescue gear, I creep along and flick my high beams. The dark and twisting road is dotted with roadkill wherever there are signs of civilization. I pull over by a gas station and shine a light on a feathery pile. Sure enough, it’s a mangled puffling.

Poor thing didn’t have much of a chance once it mistakenly flew to shore from the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve, tricked by light pollution into thinking the moon was leading it out to sea.

The Puffin & Petrel Patrol NL has already been out every night for 23 straight days this August, and rescued several hundred birds, but it can only do so much.

This is the second time I’ve come to Newfoundland and Labrador in August to join its famous seabird rescue experience.

In 2017, there were more rescuers than birds. My daughter Hazel and I drove the darkened streets of a seaside village in vain, then joined an anxious crowd at the wharf. When one puffling flew over our heads, everyone gave chase and then surrounded the lucky rescuer.

I wasn’t around in 2018 when the Puffin Patrol peaked. Some nights more than 100 volunteers showed up to scour Witless Bay, Tors Cove and Burnt Cove. It was too crowded and dangerous.

Starting this year, they limited it to 16 cars a night and asked people to register. (For 2020, watch the CPAWS website. Registration will likely open in early summer. The program is also being tested out in the Elliston area.)

And yes, baby puffins are really called pufflings. To counterbalance that cuteness, Mother Nature gives them boring black beaks. The colours and stripes don’t appear until they’re adults, and only come briefly during mating season.

This time I’m not leaving until I save a puffling. But first I visit the Puffin Man — a German who once worked in the film business and rubbed shoulders with Hollywood’s A-list before falling in love with Newfoundland and puffins.

To get to Juergen Schau’s home in Witless Bay, drive past the sign that says “Slow down! Baby puffins on road. Be aware!” Look for the house with the whirling wooden puffin out front.

I find him in the garage that once doubled as patrol headquarters. It’s decorated with “Puffin Savings Time” posters, media articles and a lovely puffin painting.

It was during an August 2004 visit that Juergen and his wife Elfie first saw dead birds on the road.

“We didn’t know what they were,” remembers Elfie. “We asked people and they said don’t touch them — they are poison.”

The horrified couple realized these were young puffins. Armed with dollar store butterfly nets, flashlights and gloves, they started catching the wayward birds, keeping them overnight, and releasing them into the ocean the next morning. Similar patrols led by children are popular in Iceland.

Atlantic puffins — the provincial bird of Newfoundland and Labrador — spend most of their lives at sea, only coming to land in spring and summer to breed. Nicknamed the “clowns of the sea,” they gravitate to rocky islands away from predators. By August, the parents stop feeding the babies and tell them to leave the burrow at night, look for the moon and stars, and follow the lights to sea.

Light pollution from homes and businesses lures some to shore. If the cars don’t get them, the animals do.

“They are seduced by artificial light,” laments Juergen. “Unfortunately, we don’t always have the moon here, we have fog, rain and drizzle. They fly to the light and then just stand in the middle of the road.”

The Schaus patrolled alone at first, then with local kids, the children’s parents and other Newfoundlanders. The media hyped the feel-good story, David Suzuki did a Nature of Things episode, and visitors starting booking Newfoundland holidays around the Puffin Patrol.

“We did it from our heart,” says Juergen, “and it touched the heart of the people.”

But there were problems. It’s actually illegal under the Canadian Wildlife Act to handle migratory seabirds without a permit. Volunteers were sometimes invading the privacy of homes and businesses and causing traffic safety concerns.

In 2011, the Schaus turned to the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) for help coordinating the volunteer program and doing things by the book, complete with permits. The program also rescues baby Leach’s storm petrels from September to November, but those sweet black things don’t get puffin-level love.

It’s the last Friday in August and I’m driving unfamiliar roads in a miserable rain with sporadic fog. Suddenly I spot a puffling, pull over and throw on my four-way flashers. Puffins aren’t great fliers — they look like winged bowling balls hovering over the water — and this one darts across the road and up a driveway.

“Don’t go onto people’s property because that’s just impolite and we want to respect our neighbours,” patrol assistant Kirsten Brown had warned when she gave me a list of rules along with a reflective vest, net, gloves, flashlight and plastic carrier.

I hesitate. Newfoundlanders are friendly, but I’m alone and it’s late. I let the puffling disappear into the shadows.

“It happens,” the patrol’s engagement coordinator Karleena Squires says consolingly when I confess.

My solo shift runs 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. and I get a map of hotspots where the birds might be. I should have come here in the daylight to get to know the roads before dark. I should have booked a room in town instead of 45 minutes away in St. John’s. Next time I will know that the convenience and hardware stores are bird magnets, and that because most patrollers stick to Witless Bay, there’s a better chance of rescues in Tors Cove and Burnt Cove.

I’m in the patrol’s Bay Bulls headquarters as Chelsea Gambin and Sana Zabihi bring in a bird. They’re from St. John’s and have done the patrol half a dozen times.

“Sometimes you think the birds look like a piece a of trash and then they move,” Gambin advises.

“Some are a lot more feisty,” adds Zabihi.

Next, George and Beverly Davis race into the seaside space on loan from O’Brien’s Boat Tours.

“Is this the Puffin Patrol? We were just out for a drive on this country road and we saw something. We drove past and it seemed to be a puffin. It scooted off in the woods. When we drove back a few minutes later, we saw it again.”

This is my chance. I follow the Witless Bay couple back to Carey’s Road. The puffling’s still there and starts running. I give chase as George shouts directions. After two swoops of the net, I’ve got him.

“It’s pretty neat,” says George. “I’m glad we got the little guy back.”

Puffins, a seabird in the auk family, spend most of their lives at sea, coming to land in spring and summer to breed. They mate for life, produce one egg per year and share parental duties.

When the Schaus first holidayed here in 1997, puffins weren’t even on their radar — they came for the whales and snapped up an oceanfront property as a holiday home.

Juergen is semi-retired, but from 1989 to 2005, was managing director of Columbia-TriStar-Sony Pictures for the German-speaking market. He hobnobbed with stars like Jack Nicholson, Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, attended world premieres and festivals, and watched more than 10,000 movies.

“Now my Hollywood is here,” he says. “I have the biggest screen in the world out here — nature.” He and Elfie are trying to “fade out a little bit” and let CPAWS run the patrol.

Back at patrol headquarters, it’s nearly midnight. Thirteen birds will be saved tonight — and more than 300 this season between Aug. 2 and Sept. 1.

“Every night is different,” says Squires. “Every bird is different.” Tonight’s “right feisty” birds are rumbling in their crates, doing what she calls “the puffin stomp — walking around like they’re having a tantrum.”

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, the rescued birds are turned over to O’Brien’s Boat Tours, Molly Bawn Whale & Puffin Tours and Gatherall’s Puffin and Whale Watch to be released during whale and seabird boat tours to the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve. It’s the largest puffin colony in North America.

I lucked into a puffin release on an O’Brien’s boat in 2017. This time, I go out with Gatherall’s and learn that puffins are PPFs — “pretty poor flyers” — but can dive up to 100 metres looking for capelin and other things to eat. They dig burrows with their claws and beaks, creating chambers for a living room and washroom.

“Watching puffins try to fly is a bit the same thing as watching the Toronto Maple Leafs play hockey,” announces one cheeky crew member. “You’ve just got to believe.”

I learn that puffin mating takes 10 seconds. Since puffins have about 16 good mating years, that means about “160 seconds of lovemaking” in each bird’s life.

When the pufflins aren’t being returned to the wild from boats, they’re being released from a beach. From Thursday to Sunday, depending on the weather, everyone gathers at Lower Pond Beach in Witless Bay at 9:30 a.m. The Puffin Man always makes an appearance.

I watch as conservation assistant Emma Corbett weighs, measures and bands 13 pufflings to study migration patterns. “They can’t get off land without our help,” she explains. “We help them fly out and then they fish and eat and make their way out to sea.”

The banded birds are passed to Juergen who ceremoniously tosses each the first one and then gets us to line up and help with the others. Pufflings are not used to being out in the daylight and so the critical moment comes when they fly for a few seconds and then land on the water. If they instinctively dive to elude predators, they will probably live.

“It’s okay buddy,” Squires says to the adorable 280-gram bird that my six-year-old son Charlie gets to release. “You’re going to go home soon.”

“Hi, my darling,” coos Juergen before asking Charlie to name the bird.

“Mr. Dragon.”

Juergen wraps his gloved hands around the puffling and gets Charlie to place his gloved hands over top. Together they count — one, two, three. They toss Mr. Dragon into the air. He flies awkwardly and then splashes down.

We hold our breath. One. Two. Three. He dives. All is well.