Marbled Murrelet

Today's Animal of the Day is making a strong bid for Animal of the Year. Incidentally, it also serves as a reminder that reading Science magazine can be incredibly worthwhile. While perusing a recent issue, I stumbled across an article describing an effort to measure the age distribution of the marbled murrelet.

(This is an excerpt from the Science article, found here)

Managing Murrelets

One challenge in conservation management is estimating what a sustainable population should look like. Geographic and genetic information can readily be obtained from museum specimens, but if, as for many birds, there are morphologically distinguishable age classes, then age-ratio analysis can also provide baseline rates for reproduction and survival. The output of such an analysis can be used to set targets for population recovery. Beissinger and Peery have championed the case of the marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus), an endangered seabird from the Californian coast which unexpectedly nests high up in old-growth coniferous trees and whose plight has only recently come to attention. The murrelet population is being decimated as a result of attacks from crows, by logging, and especially via the loss of the fish that they eat. Reproduction is expensive for murrelets; they lay a single egg that weighs up to a quarter of the adult bird's weight, and adults will abandon breeding in the face of insufficient food. There are some methodological risks with age-ratio analysis, but for this bird, contemporary data from field studies were compared with the museum data, which showed that the reproductive success of contemporary murrelets is almost an order of magnitude less than it was a century ago.

Reactions:
1) Have you EVER heard of a better name than the MARBLED !@^&ING MURRELET? That is a rhetorical question.
2) It's an interesting story. No one knew they nested in trees until someone found one of their nests. In a tree. That's pretty rudimentary science, there. I need to emphasize, it is extremely surprising that this seabird nests in a tree. It would be like a penguin nesting in a tree.
3) The part about the downward forces on their population is especially sad, I think-- I mean, habitat loss and a decimation of their food source, those both suck. But imagine losing your house, losing your food, and then being ATTACKED BY CROWS! The worst.
4) George's stream-of-consciousness: "I must see a picture I must I must I must"

Read the wikipedia article, please and thank you.


And then! AND THEN! The chicks have a face only a mother could love:
Okay, I might love that face.

Until next time,
George