California
Brachyramphus marmoratus  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | |
| Type of Animal: | Birds |
|---|---|
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Alcidae |
| Federal Status: | Threatened |
| State Status: | Endangered |
| Occurrence: | |
| Habitat: | Coasts,Mountains,Coniferous Forest |
| Description: | The marbled murrelet, an outwardly unassuming seabird, maintained a secret identity for over a century. Then, in 1974, a tree climber in Santa Cruz county California nearly stepped on a peculiar bird’s nest and blew its cover. It was the last North American bird species to have its nest discovered. The marbled murrelet is a small diving seabird that occupies coastal waters from Alaska to central California. Murrelets have a unique nesting strategy that requires them to commute tens of miles inland, where they use large mossy branches on older conifers as platforms to balance their solitary egg. Nests have been found inland from the coast up to a distance of 50 miles in Washington State. Populations have been declining for decades as the amount of nesting habitat has been reduced through logging. The murrelet was listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1992. Murrelet nests aren’t really nests at all, at least not in the conventional sense. The birds simply tamp the moss on a wide branch and balance their single egg atop the indentation. During incubation of the egg, one adult sits on the nest while the other forages at sea. Every 24 hours at dawn they exchange incubation duties. Once hatched, the parents commute to the ocean, often several times per day, carrying back fish for their chick. But after only a month of doting, the chick is left to find its own way to sea, often over tens of miles of forest. Murrelets are put at risk by the very same traits that make them so unique. Populations of marbled murrelets in Washington, Oregon, and northern California have been in decline for decades. Loss of old-growth forest, critical for nesting habitat, is the likely explanation. Fifty to 90 percent of older forest habitat in the Pacific Northwest has been lost to logging and development, and much of what remains is highly fragmented. |
| Effort: | |
| References: | Above information from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service |
| Other Sites: | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service U.S. Forest Service |
| Field Office(s): | Arcata |