The marbled murrelet is a very strange bird!
Marbled Murrelet Photo credit: WC photo files
It has tiny but very powerful wings designed for fast underwater swimming to catch fish. Unfortunately, these small wings don’t fly very well. The only way these tiny wings work is by beating very fast. The marbled murrelet flies up to 120 km per hour – faster than cars on the highway. At that speed, it’s hard for them to slow down quickly enough for these little birds to land gently on their delicate tree branch nests. If these birds slow down too much or too early they fall through the air like a stone.
To get around this problem, marbled murrelets nest high up on the big mossy branches of old growth trees. They swoop into the old growth forest close to the ground, and when they reach their nest tree, they slow down by gliding straight up. They time their landing perfectly so that they just plop down gently on their soft mossy nest area.
Marbled murrelet babies are just as interesting. Each pair of adults has no more than one chick per year. When it is 30 days old, the chick is ready to fly. It takes a lot of courage for the chick to leave the nest. Marbled murrelets need to be going about 30 km per hour (the speed limit for cars driving past your school) before their little wings can support their body. Baby marbled murrelets have to jump off the edge of their nests and drop straight down for about 15 metres until they are going fast enough to fly to the ocean. Once they leave, the babies never return to their nest.
The marbled murrelet is the only seabird in the world that nests in old growth forests. Their nest trees must be at low elevations (less than 900 m above sea level) and preferably near the ocean. Once common in the old growth forests that blanketed the west coast of North America, the marbled murrelet’s habitat has now been reduced to only a few areas that have not been as heavily logged, like the north coast of BC.
For more information
thescca.ca
wildernesscommittee.org
In southwest BC, where low-elevation old growth forets have been heavily logged, the marbled murrelet is in trouble. Some marbled murrelets have been forced to fly inland as far as 100 km, like at Elk Creek Valley near Chilliwack, in search of the few remaining old growth forests suitable for nesting and raising their young.
Marbled murrelet populations are in danger of extinction in many other areas of BC’s south coast and on the west coast of the United States in the states of Washington, Oregon and California.
