39th Marbled Murrelet Nest Discovery Day!

Portrait of the Alcid as a Young Chick. This drawing, by Ken Carlson, appeared inThe Wilson Bulletin in 1975.

  Thirty nine years ago today, the accidental discovery of a downy marbled murrelet on the mossy branch of a 220-foot-high Douglas-fir solved one of the last great ornithological mysteries in North America. 

   On August 7, 1974, a tree trimmer named Hoyt Foster was working his way up the Douglas-fir in Big Basin Redwood State Park in California's Santa Cruz Mountains and nearly stepped on the murrelet chick that was hunkered down on a wide mossy branch 148 feet up the tree. Foster's discovery ended the search for the nesting site of the marbled murrelet, a seabird whose secretive breeding habitats had eluded scientists for 185 years.

   Though the murrelet is relatively easy to spot in the nearshore waters along the Pacific Northwest Coast where it forages, this robin-sized species of alcid seems to have been designed to avoid detection: its high-speed and crepuscular flights into the coastal old-growth forests, its camouflaging breeding plumage, and its silence at the nest contributed to its success at avoiding detection--by predators and birders alike.

    The chick discovered on August 7 was the critical link that enabled scientists to document the murrelet's dependence on the remaining mature and old-growth forests for their survival. Only in these forests can the marbled murrelet find branches wide enough and high enough to safely accommodate their egg and chick during the two-month breeding season. 

   This little chick (below) lead to the eventual listing of the marbled murrelet as a threatened and endangered species in Washington, Oregon, and California under the Endangered Species Act in 1992.

The downy murrelet chick discovered in Big Basin Redwood State Park in 1974 and now in the collection of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Note the black feathers of the chick's juvenal plumage growing beneath the down--a sign that this chick was near fledging.  (Photos, here and above, by Maria M. Ruth)

  In 1970,the editors ofAudubon Field Notes offered a $100 prize for the first verified discovery of the nest of "this stubbord holdout." No one every claimed the prize--Hoyt Foster discovered, but did not document the discovery with an account and photographs. That job was completed by ornithologist Laurence C. Binford, biologist Steven W. Singer, and California Dept. of Fish and Game biologist Bruce G. Elliott inThe Wilson Bulletin (Vol. 87, No. 3) in September 1975.

 Read the full story of the discovery in my book, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet, just reissued in paperback by Mountaineers Books.

Vanishing Seabirds...and Other Species

This spunky marbled murrelet chick makes appears on the upcoming reissue of Rare Bird by The Mountaineers Books. (Illustration by Paul Harris Jones). 

  Thanks to the Washington State Audubon list-serve,"The Case of the Vanishing Seabirds" "The Case of the Vanishing Seabird" arrived in my inbox this week. It's fascinating article from Crosscut.com about the marbled murrelet by award-winning science writer, Eric Scigliano. 

   I am grateful to Scigliano for his article, despite the fact that I was criticized for "neglecting" to address the collapsing Pacific coast fisheries in my book, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet. 

For the record, Rare Bird was published in the spring of 2005--my research being completed in 2004, shortly after the publication of the UC-Berkeley study, which suggested declining reproduction rates among marbled murrelets could be exacerbated by reduced prey availability, based on observations that murrelets were spending more time diving in pursuit of prey.

  I was aware of the UC-Berkeley study prior to its publication, but 1) it was just one study (among hundreds I read on the murrelet),2) the study was based on research conducted in central California (a fraction of the murrelet's range), and 3) I did not feel this newly documented potential threat deserved the kind of focus I devoted to the well-studied, range-wide threats to the murrelet: harvesting of the old-growth forests, catastrophic oil spills and chronic oil pollution, gill-net fishing, and increased nest predation.

Moreover, it was not until 2007 that the UC-Berkeley study on prey species was published--the study containing much of the information I Scigliano says I neglected in my 2005 book. This study--the real subject of Scigliano's article--presents evidence that murrelets have been "feeding down the food chain"--that the historically abundant and fatty prey such as sardines, anchovies, and squid have been overfished and that the murrelets are spending more and more time pursuing smaller and smaller (and less nutritious) fish, including even tiny krill. 

 Thanks to the Mountaineers Books, Rare Bird is being reissued in paperback this September and in my new epilogue I have addressed the increasingly complex suite of threats facing the marbled murrelet at sea. In addition to a reduction in quantity and quality of their prey species, murrelets continue to face the pernicious threat oil pollution and catastrophic oil spills, which are likely to increase in both the U.S. and Canada with the recent push in domestic oil production. Increases in offshore oil drilling, gas-platform development, shipping traffic (including oil tankers) in the coastal waters where murrelets are most abundant put the species at high risk. Gillnet fishing, though banned in California and in Oregon, is still practiced in Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia. (In B.C. alone, about 550 murrelets drown by entanglement each year as bycatch).

   Newly documented threats to murrelets at sea includes entrapment in derelict fishing gear (abandoned gillnets, purse seines, crab pots, and other fishing lines); warming ocean temperatures, changes in upwelling patterns, ocean acidification, sea-level rise, and other climate-change-associated phenomena affect the murrelet's prey species. The frequency of algal blooms and accumulated biotoxins (such as PCBs and PDBE) causes the deaths of seabirds through contaminated their prey species; some algal blooms produce compounds that reduce feather waterproofing and cause hypothermia. Increased levels of domoic acid cause neurological damage among seabirds. Increased aquaculture displaces murrelets from foraging habitat and degrades the spawning ground of their prey fish. Elevated underwater sound disturbance, such as pile driving and detonations has been shown to cause injuries and mortality among seabirds and also disrupt their foraging behavior. Even so-called green energy has a cost: murrelets risk collision with massive underwater wave and tidal turbines in their foraging grounds; onshore and offshore wind turbines add the risk of collision to airborne murrelets if they are placed in the murrelet’s sea-to-forest flight path.

  These threats affect not only marbled murrelets--a federally threatened species--but also many other seabirds. The marbled murrelets are considered an indicator species--they are sensitive to changes in the ocean where they spend 95% of their time and in the old-growth coastal forests where the breed.

  What they are and have been indicating for several decades is that these ecosystems are badly broken and that the future looks bleak for many species, including our own, as we spend more and more time extracting, harvesting, mining increasingly precious resources.

 Thanks to Eric Scigliano for his well-written fascinating article and the opportunity to discuss the important research on the marbled murrelet.

Murrelet Survives Attack

  On April 1, the federal court in Washington, D.C. rejected the timber industry's attempt to eliminate important protections of the marbled murrelet's forest nesting habitat in the Pacific Northwest.

   Long-time friend of this endearing and endangered seabird, the law firm Earthjustice fought the case on behalf of the marbled murrelet and the Audubon Society of Portland, the Seattle Audubon Society, the Center for Biological Diversity NW, the Environmental Protection Information Center, Oregon Wild, and the Sierra Club. 

  Thanks to these hard-working groups for their ongoing hard work to lessen the murrelet's struggle to survive.

  The most recent scientific report shows a decline of nearly 30 percent of the population of murrelets in Washington, Oregon, and California between 2001 and 2010. In Alaska, where the murrelets receive no special protection, populations have declined about 70 percent in the last 25 years; similar declines are suspected in British Columbia. These depressingly large numbers represent losses due primarily to the historic and ongoing logging of mature and old-growth forests where these beleaguered seabirds nest.

   "Without old-growth forest protection," said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity, "murrelets will disappear from our coast."

Rare Bird Flies Again

  It is with barely contained excitement that I share with you this good news: The Mountaineers Books is reissuing my book, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet in paperback in September 2013.

   It's been eight years since the hardback edition was first published and I am thrilled to be introducing my favorite bird to new audiences and that The Mountaineers Books is putting their imprint on the book with a new epilogue, an index, a section on helping the murrelet, and an arresting new cover (sneak preview in an upcoming post).

  Rare Bird has found the perfect new home.  For those of you new to The Mountaineers Books, they are a Seattle-based publisher with 500+ titles in print, focusing on recreation, lifestyle, and conservation. They are the publishers of natural history books. including ones on birds of arctic, caribou, beluga whales, polar bears, and urban goats. No doubt you own one or several of their popular "100 Classic Hikes" or "Best Hikes" series of guides or the bible of mountain climbing, Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills (8th edition).

   I so wish I had read this bible before I began following biologists into murrelet habitat. I would have gotten in shape. I would have understood contours maps and, therefore, the difference between a "stroll" and an "uphill battle." I would have brought my own stick to scare off the mountain lions. I would not have worn cotton, the death fabric. But memories (and stories for Rare Bird) were made from near-death experiences in the wilderness.

   Which is not to say you have to go off trail and bushwhack your way through an old-growth forest to experience the world of the marbled murrelet. Let the professionals do that. Let your armchair transport you into the Pacific Coast's old-growth forests. You know. The arm chair next to the reading lamp. The armchair with the little table next to it, the table waiting to hold the Mountaineers Books'Rare Bird.

Artwork by Paul Harris Jones will again  grace the pages of Rare Bird