Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE PLOVER-LIKE BIRDS

THE GULLS AND THEIR ALLIES

The Common Murre

(U. troille) may be selected as the type of this group. It is about sixteen inches long and has the upper parts a rich velvety brown and the lower parts pure white, with a small spot of white on the wings.

It is found on the coasts of the North Atlantic, nesting on the American side from Nova Scotia northward and ranging south in winter to southern New England and to the Mediterranean on the European side. During the nesting season they assemble by hundreds or frequently thousands, in suitable locations such as cliffs, rocky islands, and bold shores, where they rear their young, often in company with various other species.

”Notwithstanding the immense numbers that sometimes resort to the same rock,”says Dr. Brewer,”there is a freedom from confusion and a prevalence of order and. system in their operations that is quite remarkable.

As by mutual and common consent, not only do the different species keep apart, and occupy separate portions of their breeding ground, but each individual bird apparently knows its place and keeps to it, going at once to its own chosen spot to renew its eggs when the nest has been despoiled of its treasure.”

The Murres make no nest, but lay the single very large egg on a bare rocky shelf. In shape the egg is of an elongate pear form, a configuration, it is said, that is a wise provision of nature for preventing the egg from being knocked or easily rolled from the ledge when the bird is suddenly startled, as when a gun is fired near the”rookery.”

The egg, being of this pear shape, simply rolls around in a circle if there fortunately be sufficient room, instead of rolling directly off, as, for example, the egg of a domestic fowl would be 'inclined to do. In color the eggs are extremely variable, hardly any two being alike.

They vary in ground color from ivory-white to yellowish green, dark green, pale blue, and reddish brown, or even almost black, while the markings of black and brown are equally variable.

This variation in color perhaps explains the reason for each bird recognizing its own egg so readily. According to Nuttall, the bird is so solicitous for its egg that it may”be seized by the hand or killed on the spot without flying from its favorite cliff.”Incubation, in which both parents take part, occupies four weeks, and it seems to be pretty well authenticated that when the young are only partially grown and still unable to fly, they are carried down to the sea on the backs of the old birds.

 

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