Though it’s been nearly a decade since my 2005 book, Rare Bird, was reissued by Mountaineers Books—I still follow news of the Marbled Murrelet and will always have a soft spot for this endearing little seabird.
I was thrilled to receive news that a recently grounded Marbled Murrelet chick had taken flight. This was extraordinary because from what I had learned, a murrelet’s webbed feet never touch the ground. If accidentally grounded (by falling out of their nesting tree, for instance) they are unable to get airborne. Typically, they become a meal for another animal before they are found and rescued. But, as luck would have it, a murrelet chick that had fallen from its nest in Oregon’s Siuslaw National Forest was discovered by a team of Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project field researchers who just happened to be in the forest monitoring murrelet nests and noticed an empty nest.
This. Never. Happens.
But it did and the researchers transported the chick to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport where staff there transported it to the Wildlife Center of the North Coast in Astoria for rehabilitation. The chick was growing its juvenal plumage—flight feathers and all—but still had much of its downy coat intact. The staff at the Wildlife Center took great care to hydrate, warm, wash, and feed the chick. And thank heavens they fed it slivers of herring—and not cream with chopped up clams. Which is what well-meaning rehabilitates did in 1974 when a murrelet chick was removed from its nest in a tree to save it from the tree surgeon’s saw (Chapter 10 of Rare Bird). No one new what murrelet chicks ate then, but we do now: fish!
The Wildlife Center staff was kind enough to give me permission to post the photos below of the team caring for the murrelet and giving it a second lease on its precious and precarious life.
So, after nearly a month of care and feeding, the healthy juvenile Marbled Murrelet was transported to a research vessel at Yaquina Head, Oregon, and released.
Read the full story with more photos and a VIDEO of the release by the Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project here. Go little, MAMU, go!
A Marbled Murrelet juvenile with a few bits of its downy plumage after nearly a month in rehab. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)
Wildlife Center staff feeding the Marbled Murrelet slivers of herring. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)
Rehabilitators remove debris and contaminants from the murrelet’s feathers until it is able to preen itself. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)
The grounded murrelet spent nearly a month in the loving care of wildlife rehabilitates. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)