The marbled murrelet feeds in kelp-fringed seas and nests miles inland on old-growth limbs. The ecology of a seabird split between two vanishing worlds.
For almost two centuries after it was named by science, nobody knew where the marbled murrelet nested. The small seabird was familiar enough — a robin-sized alcid working the cold nearshore waters from Alaska to California — yet its nest remained a mystery until 1974, when a tree surgeon in California climbed into a giant Douglas fir and found a downy chick sitting alone on a wide, mossy branch, 45 metres above the forest floor and miles from the sea. The marbled murrelet turned out to be a seabird with its life split in half: ocean-bound for food, forest-bound for family. That split defines both its strange ecology and its conservation.
The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) is a small, chunky diving bird of the auk family — cousins to murres, puffins and guillemots. Two cues carry most field ID:
On the water, murrelets often travel in pairs, sit low in the swell, and flee with a whirring, low flight when pressed. They fly fast — murrelets have been clocked at remarkable speeds for their size — because their daily commute is a long one, from sea to forest and back.
Murrelets forage in cool, productive nearshore waters — bays, straits and the fringes of kelp beds — diving from the surface and using their wings to "fly" underwater after prey. Their staples are small schooling fish: Pacific sand lance, juvenile herring, anchovies, small smelts — the forage fish at the bottom of the entire coastal food web. They also take krill and other crustaceans when they swarm. As pursuit divers, they work the same water column as common murres and cormorants, but they hold tight to the coastal edge — rarely seen far offshore.
The kelp forest matters to them as structure in their foraging seascape. Kelp edges concentrate baitfish, and murrelets work those boundaries like shepherds on a fence line, diving where the forest meets open water.
The nesting strategy is the marvel. Instead of burrows or cliff ledges, marbled murrelets lay a single egg — no nest at all — in a shallow mossy depression on a wide, horizontal limb of an old conifer, typically many dozens of metres up and often tens of kilometres inland. The limb needs to be broad enough to cradle an egg against a storm, plush with moss for camouflage and drainage, and reachable through gaps in a complex, old canopy that a thick-winged bird can fly into at predawn speed.
Just as remarkably, the parents commute. Through incubation and chick-rearing, adults fly between the sea and the nest — bringing whole fish, one at a time, carried crosswise in the bill — moving between salt water and ancient forest on a daily schedule. The chick sits alone on the limb for weeks, a small mottled fistful of feathers, quieter and stiller than almost any other bird its age, until it makes its single flight to the ocean, done at dusk, alone, forever.
The pace of murrelet life is slow. Pairs produce at most one chick per year; young birds take years to reach breeding age; adults are long-lived and faithful to both mate and forest. This is a strategy of high investment and low output — sustainable under the stable conditions in which it evolved (endless old forest, rich seas), brittle under fast change.
The marbled murrelet's predicament is a compound one. On land, logging removed much of the accessible old-growth nesting habitat along the Pacific coast, fragmenting what remains into remnants far from the sea. At sea, its prey base shifts with climate: warm-water years and marine heatwaves can scramble the forage-fish communities of the nearshore, and a bird commuting on a tight energy budget feels a slow season keenly. On top come smaller, quieter pressures — disturbance, oil spill risk along its entire marine range, and the nest predators (jays, crows, ravens) that proliferate in human-modified forest edges.
The species is listed as threatened in Washington, Oregon and California under the US Endangered Species Act, and conservation pivots on protecting the remaining old-growth nesting forests within flying distance of healthy waters. It's a distinctly modern conservation problem: you can't safeguard the bird with a marine reserve alone, and you can't safeguard it with a forest preserve alone. Its habitat is the whole coastline, wet side and dry.
For kelp-forest advocates there's a resonance here: the murrelet is a living demonstration that ocean health and land health are one system. A healthy kelp coast means dense forage fish; a healthy coast-range forest means a safe nursery. Restoration efforts that rebuild kelp and the baitfish they shelter quietly support this bird — one of many reasons the kelp forest ecosystem earns its keystone reputation.
Watch for murrelets on calm, cool coastal mornings: from headlands, ferry decks and kayaks along kelp-fringed shorelines from Alaska through the Pacific Northwest to central California. Look for the small dark bird swimming low in the water, the pair that dives together, the whirring ball of speed that lifts off and vanishes toward the trees. Scanning with binoculars, you'll learn their habit quickly. Our guides to birdwatching the kelp coast and the seabirds of the encyclopedia will help you place the murrelet among its cousins.
Because the birds nest high in the canopy of old-growth, far inland, arriving in dim light and moving quietly. The chicks sit silent and alone on vast mossy limbs — hard to spot even when you're looking up from below. Also, almost no one thought to look up, into the mountains, for a seabird's nest.
Typically within about 80 km of the coast, in old-growth forest — the maximum commuting range consistent with the energy economics of the breeding season.
Small schooling forage fish — sand lance, juvenile herring, anchovies, small smelts — plus krill and other crustaceans when they're abundant. They are pursuit divers, chasing prey underwater with their wings.
It is listed as threatened (not endangered) in Washington, Oregon and California, due to loss of old-growth nesting habitat and changes in its marine food supply — a reflection of a species in decline but not yet at the brink.
Size and shape first: the murrelet is robin-small and chunky; the common murre is crow-sized and sleek. In winter plumage, the murrelet's white collar patch and compact proportions separate it from the streakier, larger winter murres.
Meet the common murre, the foot-propelled pursuit diver of kelp-coast upwellings — a flying auk that hunts 100 metres down and raises chicks on bare cliffs.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Meet the pigeon guillemot: the black-and-white auk with scarlet feet that nests in shoreline crevices and hunts sculpins through kelp beds.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The rhinoceros auklet: the puffin's burrowing cousin with a bill 'horn', night-time colony returns, and fish-laden commutes over kelp-rich shelf water.
Tom Okafor ·