Marbled murrelet
A small seabird that nests far inland on a mossy old-growth limb, with no nest built around the egg, a nest nobody found until 1974.
Marbled murrelet at a glance
Brachyramphus marmoratus MAR-buld MUR-uh-let; Brachyramphus marmoratus is brak-ee-RAM-fus mar-mor-AH-tus
- Type
- Bird · seabird
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Size
- About as long as a banana (9 to 11 inches / 23 to 28 cm) and light enough to rest in two cupped hands (6 to 9 ounces / 170 to 250 grams).
- Lifespan
- Often 10 years or more in the wild.
- Conservation
- Threatened (U.S. Endangered Species Act, 1992); Endangered (IUCN)
Eats herring, smelt, anchovies, other small fish
A marbled murrelet dives from the ocean surface and swims underwater, using its wings almost like flippers, to chase down small schooling fish. It swallows what it catches at sea, and sometimes carries a single fish inland crosswise in its bill to feed a chick.
Should you worry?
No danger at all. A marbled murrelet spends its life on salt water or high in a forest canopy and never interacts with people on the ground. The only real ask: if a ranger points out a nest tree or a closed grove, stay out. A single disturbed nesting attempt can be a bird's whole year.
In 1974, a tree worker climbing an old-growth conifer in California’s Big Basin found something ornithologists had been hunting for the better part of two centuries: a marbled murrelet nest. It wasn’t much to look at. A single fuzzy, mottled chick, sitting alone far up the trunk on a wide, moss-covered limb. No sticks, no woven grass, nothing built at all, just bird and moss.
That absence of nest material turns out to be the whole story. A marbled murrelet spends nearly its entire life at sea, diving for herring and smelt within sight of the coast, then flies inland every spring to lay one egg directly on a branch. It needs a limb wide enough and mossy enough to hold that egg with nothing built underneath it, and only an old-growth tree grows one. A young replanted forest, however thick with trunks, won’t have a limb like that for a century or more.
The threat that reaches those nests today doesn’t come from saws alone. Steller’s jays, quick to learn where campers leave food out, raid murrelet eggs off those same bare mossy limbs, and researchers have tracked the effect spreading up to a kilometer past the edge of a campground. Lock the cooler at a Redwood or Olympic campsite and you’re doing more than keeping raccoons out of the marshmallows. Somewhere inland, on a branch you’ll never see, an egg sits a little safer.
Did you know?
- No one had ever seen a marbled murrelet nest until 1974, when a tree worker climbing an old-growth tree found a single fuzzy chick sitting on a bare, mossy limb. Ornithologists had been looking for almost two hundred years.
- A murrelet doesn't build a nest at all. It lays its one egg directly on a wide bed of moss growing on a thick old-growth branch.
- Because it depends on trees that take a century or more to grow the right kind of mossy, wide limb, a marbled murrelet can't simply move into a young replanted forest, even one already full of trees.
Common questions
Why did it take so long to find a marbled murrelet nest?
It nests alone, far from other birds, high in old-growth trees deep in the forest, sometimes miles from the ocean where it spends the rest of its life. The first nest wasn't found until 1974.
What does a marbled murrelet eat?
Small fish like herring, smelt, and anchovies, caught by diving underwater and swimming after them with its wings.
Is the marbled murrelet endangered?
It's listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in Washington, Oregon, and California, mainly because logging removed most of the old-growth forest it needs for nesting.
Are marbled murrelets dangerous to kids?
No. They live on the water or high in the forest canopy and never interact with people on the ground. Just stay out of any nest tree or grove a ranger marks as closed.