by Frank Keim
I don’t remember ever seeing Common murres while living and teaching in the YK Delta, but I did see plenty of them in both Togiak Bay and Nushagak Bay while helping two friends on different occasions during fishing season. I also remember seeing these seabirds (a species of auk) on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland while visiting my cousins there in the late 1990’s. But they are also found along the Bering Sea coast wherever there are high steep sea cliffs.
If you’re in a boat, you may spot them by the hundreds standing sentinel-like in black and white tuxedos on their rocky nesting cliffs at the edge of the sea. They are in the auk and puffin family, and they have been described as “flying penguins,” although penguins do not live in the north. Their slender wings not only allow them to fly quickly far out on the ocean to search for food, they also function as flippers that propel them down under the water to depths of 66-164 feet to forage for small fish, squid, octopus, and marine crustaceans such as krill.
In early spring, these sleek seabirds begin migrating north from their winter feeding waters in the north Pacific and head for the cooler more bountiful feeding and nesting habitat of the Bering Sea. Since Common murres don’t breed until they are 4-5 years old, younger birds take their time, but older birds are more serious about getting back to their nesting cliffs to claim the same site they use every year.
Before nesting, groups of murres often display near the cliffs. They do what is referred to as a “water dance,” where they patter over the surface of the water, chasing one another. They may also fly in circles, called a “joy flight.” Pairs both start, and later maintain, their bonds with a greeting, where both birds point their bills skyward, bow deeply, clash open bills together, then preen each other’s feathers, usually while purring or murmuring. One, most often the female, may return to the nest site from the sea with a fish, and present it ceremonially to its mate.
Males guard their partners fiercely before egg laying, chasing off rivals with lunges and jabbing with their sharp bills. They nest in large noisy colonies or rookeries that sound like a madhouse full of deranged raucous laughter, and although they don’t have nesting territories, they do defend the area on the cliff ledge or near the small cavity in the cliff rock above the sea where the single egg or chick is.
They don’t build an actual nest, but sometimes arrange pebbles around their egg on the ledge, then cement them with their guano to prevent the egg from rolling over the cliff. The narrow shape of one end of their egg and broad round shape of the other end also helps to prevent this. If it is accidentally nudged, it simply rolls in a circle around the narrow end.
Each single egg has a different color and blotch pattern from all other eggs in the colony, and this amazing variation allows the parents to recognize their own egg when they return to their crowded ledges or cavities. Incubation is by both parents for 28-37 days, and when the chick hatches it is covered in down and able to stand within one day.
The chick is fed by both parents. It leaves the nest at 15-25 days old, even before it is able to fly, awkwardly fluttering down to the water below where it is fed and cared for by both of its parents for several more weeks. Its father then teaches it how to hunt and capture its prey, which, in addition to krill, octopus and squid, includes small fish like pollock, various cods, sandlance, sculpin, capelin, herring and smelt. Within 50-70 days the young bird is finally strong enough to lift off the water and fly.
When they forage for food, murres do so alone or in flocks, often with other seabird species. They have been known to dive as deep as 591 feet to hunt and catch their prey, which they hold with their long slender, sharp-edged tongues against sharp nubs (denticles) on the roof of their mouth until they can swallow it. They forage in deep seawater because this is where they find the cold upwelling currents where most of their prey is concentrated. Warm water is not as bountiful as cold water for plankton or other sea animals on up the food chain because it contains less life-giving oxygen to sustain them. Since ocean waters are warming due to climate change, this is cause for concern about the availability of the food supply of these seabirds and others into the future.
With the rate of climate change accelerating over recent decades, Pacific populations of Common murres have declined considerably. As ocean waters continue to warm, this change will have significant, and possibly catastrophic, effects on murres and other seabirds. Much of their feeding and nesting range will be forced to shift farther north into the high Arctic and, with pollution from oil spills, drowning in gill-netting operations, overfishing of prey species and hunting of murres in the Arctic, the future doesn’t look good for them.
The English name “murre” is imitative of the purring or murmuring sound they make at their rookeries. Other common names of the seabird are: Thin-billed murre and Common guillemot. Their scientific name, Uria aalge, is Latin-Danish for auk (Danish: aalge) and guillemot (Latin: uria). The Yup’ik name I found in the YK Delta for Common murres is Alpak, possibly having something to do with the way they eat their prey.
