Marbled murrelets! For 30 years are now few and far between, and
I’ve heard them lovingly described what are left have badly fragmented
by biologists as a flying baked potato murrelet populations. Sometime later
with a beak. But not just ANY flying this century, when the only birds
baked potato, for this little chubby remaining are small population pockets
ocean bird was once America’s biggest in our national parks, this strange and
ornithological mystery. While we unusual sea bird will simply not be
were putting men on the moon and viable as a species any more. And if
gloating about how smart we were, that happens, I hope I’m not here to
no one knew where these local birds witness it.
even nested. Science ‘discovered’ the Murrelets have a definite “look”
murrelet in 1789, but it took another to them on the water and so they’re
185 years for us to find a single nest! easy to identify. About the size of an
And while we knew that Alaskan American robin, they’re smaller than
marbled murrelets nested on mossy gulls and cormorants, but here’s the
rocky cliffs, no murrelet nest had ever key. They always hold their short bills
been found between San Francisco and slightly upward at a different angle
Southwestern British Columbia at the than any other seabird, like the graceful
south end of their range. The birds angle of a schooner’s bowsprit. Fast
were often seen oddly out of place fliers with rapid wing beats both in the
flying around the big trees in coastal air and underwater, they spend most
old-growth forests and loggers referred of their lives in coastal waters where
to them as “fog doves,” but why were they court, feed, loaf, molt and preen.
they there if they live on the ocean? These long-lived birds only visit old-
growth forests when they do nesting
duties, where nests aren’t built but
F
rather squished into place in the moss.
lying Baked Potatoes
Only one egg usually once a year is
laid. Incubation lasts about a month
with both parents incubating the egg in
Then, in 1974, in the Santa Cruz alternating 24-hour shifts, and chicks
area of California, a tree climber almost fledge in another month.
The little seabird
stepped on a chick in the canopy of an Summer adults have sooty-brown
old-growth redwood, and the mystery upperparts and are lighter brown
that helped save
was solved. Instead of nesting on below, colors that make them highly
mossy rocks, to increase their range camouflaged against the giant trees
southward the birds had adapted their they’re nesting on. In winter, adults
some big trees.
nesting habits to the huge horizontal and young become brownish-gray with
upper limbs of the giant coastal old- white wing patches that more closely
growth, often hundreds of feet in the match ocean colors of wind on waves.
air, and sometimes upwards of 45 miles So, let’s say you’re a very young
from salt water. They hunt for small murrelet only a month old. You were
fish like herring by day in the ocean born in the top of a two hundred foot tall
and return to their nesting duties in the Douglas-fir up the Dosewallips River in
evening. the Olympics. Your parents had chosen
Without old-growth trees, murrelets THE nest tree just around a sharp river
wouldn’t be able to nest on the West bend near Little Mystery Peak, where
Coast of the Lower 48. It’s not just big they had located a big mossy branch
trees they need, but big horizontal maybe fifteen stories off the ground.
branches thick with moss and lichens, The definition of ‘nest’ is pretty casual
and trees don’t become like this until here; because it’s just a thick bunch of
by
they’re centuries old. Because of this, moss your parents had smooshed into
and all the logging we’ve done in the a shallow cavity. When you were born,
past 200 years, the marbled murrelet is your egg was pale speckled green, the
Larry Eifert
now listed as federally threatened and exact same color of the limb’s moss in
state endangered in Washington (12,000 spring, not like the dried-out brown
birds), Oregon (7,500) and California stuff of late summer or the lush soft
(4,500). Some scientists believe that green of winter. It wasn’t much of a
it’s not whether murrelets will become nest, and so your parents rarely left
extinct, but when, because old forests you unattended so wandering-babes
48° No r t h , Ja N u a r y 2010 Pa g e 52
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