- dr. kristen weiss, wildlife & forest campaigner, pacific wild
meet the "flying potato"
A pair of marbled murrelets on the water. Photo by Ian McAllister
The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) has more nicknames than almost any bird on the coast: flying potato, soaring spud, fog dove, fog lark, and to researchers who’ve spent careers chasing its secrets, simply “the enigma of the Pacific.”1 Indigenous peoples have long known this small seabird, closely related to auks and puffins, too: it’s Ch’eet to the Tlingit, spipiyus to the Shíshálh, and Ts’aallanga to the Haida. These days, marbled murrelets are often simply referred to as MaMu, based on the four-letter shorthand that birders tend to use.
The potato-themed nicknames are fairly apt for this small, chunky bird, especially when seen bobbing on the waves in its mottled brown summer plumage. But don’t let the shape fool you: MaMu can fly at a remarkable 80 to 150 kilometers per hour (on par with some of the fastest hawks and falcons!), and dive upwards of 45 feet beneath the ocean surface. During nesting season, they zip from their nearshore feeding areas deep into the coastal old-growth forests where they nest.
Unlike most seabirds, marbled murrelets don’t nest in colonies on rocky cliffs. Instead, they fly up to 80 km inland and nest in isolation, high in the mossy limbs of ancient trees, often many kilometers apart from one another because suitably large branches are so rare. Nesting in isolation also helps reduce the chances that predators like jays or ravens will find the nest.
A female lays only a single egg per year, and fledglings have less than a 50% chance of survival. Both parents travel to and from the sea multiple times per day, starting before dawn, for several weeks to feed their chick. But when it comes time for the chick to take flight, it receives no support from its parents, and no practice runs — it must follow pure instinct.
And because MaMu can’t simply lift off like other birds, their first flight as fledglings is a literal leap of faith, involving a drop from a mossy branch high in an old-growth canopy, followed by a desperate flap to catch air and speed before gravity wins. Their specialized wings and webbed feet are perfect for speedy dives in water, but they make forest take-offs and landings extra challenging. That’s why MaMu breeding pairs must search for nest branches that are not only wide enough to safely house an egg, but also aren’t overly crowded by understory vegetation that might impede flight.
Every old-growth tree lost to logging is one less place a breeding MaMu pair can raise its next generation. This inextricable link between forest and sea is exactly what makes marbled murrelets so unique, and why, like the northern spotted owl, they’ve become a flashpoint in the fight to protect what’s left of coastal old-growth forest.
An old-growth tree with a mossy branch, a potential marbled murrelet nesting location. Photo by Lars Isaac
a listed at-risk species lacking legal protection
MaMu are listed as threatened under the federal Species at Risk Act, and populations continue to decline year over year as a result of shrinking and increasingly fragmented nesting habitat, combined with a warming ocean impacting the forage fish murrelets depend on to feed their chicks. More than 20 per cent of MaMu habitat has been lost in recent decades, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), and Vancouver Island is experiencing some of the most dramatic MaMu population declines (up to 9% per year) across the species’ range. Old-growth logging not only removes nesting trees that MaMu rely on; it also fragments the landscape and makes it easier for jays and corvids to prey on exposed fledglings.
Despite provincial and federal obligations to protect the species, B.C.’s Ministry of Forests continues to approve logging in old-growth stands, including forests that may actively support nesting murrelets. For example,the province’s own target for Tsitika is to protect 2,214 hectares of Marbled Murrelet nesting habitat, but even by the most generous count only about 1,740 hectares are actually protected, leaving the target unmet by roughly 475 hectares. BC Timber Sales says the rest is covered by unmapped “aspatial” measures and “designated management areas”, but has not publicly disclosed what or where these occur. This ambiguity is unacceptable in a watershed that supports some of the highest murrelet numbers on Vancouver Island, where the population continues to decline.
Part of the challenge in designating protected areas is that MaMu are notoriously difficult to study. They are most active at dawn, nest high in dense canopy far from easy observation, and confirming an actual nesting attempt has traditionally required painstaking, boots-on-the-ground survey work.
MaMu fledglings are rarely spotted, and only a few years ago cameras captured the first-ever recording of a fledgling taking flight and leaving its nest. Scientists still don’t know how MaMu fledglings find their way to the ocean without any help from their parents, who don’t stick around to see their chick make that first leap.
Field limitations have left troubling gaps in data on MaMu populations that make it easier for logging approvals to move forward in areas where protections should arguably apply.
This is where citizen science comes in.
listening for murrelets: This summer's aru deployment
This season, Pacific Wild helped fund and support a collaboration with Old-growth Birders and Bioblitzers, led by Dr. Royann Petrell, alongside a dedicated network of citizen scientists and forest watchdogs. Together, the team distributed over 30 Autonomous Recording Units (ARUs) across Vancouver Island — many of them in unprotected old-growth stands that are currently scheduled for logging in the coming years.
An Autonomous Recording Unit (ARU) mounted on a stake in suspected old-growth marbled murrelet habitat. Photo by Lars Isaac
ARUs, a form of passive acoustic monitoring, are weatherproof recorders left in the forest for extended periods to capture ambient sound, including the distinctive calls murrelets make as they fly in from the ocean at dawn to reach their nests. Compared to traditional audio-visual surveys, which rely on trained crews physically present at dawn, ARUs are a powerful tool that let researchers monitor the vast, remote terrain MaMu depend on over longer periods, at a fraction of the cost and disturbance.
Members of our Pacific Wild team recently had the chance to see this work firsthand, visiting a striking stretch of ancient forest not far from the well-known Fairy Creek watershed. There, we helped place two additional ARUs and spent the day learning from Dr. Petrell about murrelet ecology, and from Forest Technician Greg Herringer about the age and history of the surrounding trees. Some have been standing for more than a thousand years, towering remnants of an ecosystem in peril.
In July, during the height of MaMu nesting season, I attended Marbled Murrelet Day, an event hosted by Dr. Petrell alongside Friends of Carmanah Walbran, Wilderness Committee, and other local organizations. Dozens of naturalists, conservationists, birders, and artists were welcomed onto Pacheedaht Nation Territory, where we arose before dawn in hopes of catching glimpses of MaMu during their twilight flights, and perhaps hearing the unmistakable “keer, keer” as they called out to each other. The weather was perfect: fog meant that the birds were more likely to call out, and the mist was high enough that we were able to spot several MaMu as they beelined up the watershed to search for nests. The on-site radar recorded significantly more birds than we could see or hear with our limited human senses.
MaMu Day reinforced for me that this captivating little bird, with its incredibly fine-tuned life history that is so dependent on ancient forests, had become a focal point around which we gathered in recognition of the interconnections among species, ecosystems, and cultures. People from diverse backgrounds have united in shared concern for the loss of MaMu (and the old-growth forest its survival depends on) and are working to save this threatened ecosystem.
what happens next
Retrieval of this summer’s data began in August, and early results are promising: recordings show murrelets actively using a number of old-growth forests across the island, including unprotected stands in the Walbran region, one of the last intact old-growth watersheds on Vancouver Island, and an area with no formal protection from logging.
Right now, Royann and her team are synthesizing this season’s recordings, analyzing them for signs of nesting activity. Confirmed presence is only the first step: next year, the plan is to revisit the sites with the highest MaMu activity during nesting season to try to pinpoint actual nest trees. That kind of confirmed, site-specific data will be critical for making a stronger legal and scientific case for protecting these forests from logging and other extraction activities.
There’s still so much we don’t fully understand about how these birds connect forest and sea; like, for example, whether the fish that murrelets carry inland might nourish the forest itself the way salmon carried by bears and wolves do. Every recording collected this season is a small piece of a much bigger picture.
how you can help
This project only exists because of community members who have donated funds, hiked gear into remote forests, and spent precious time listening to hours of recordings for a single telltale call. That work isn’t finished, and there’s room for more hands.
Interested in volunteering?
Royann’s team offers training for citizen scientists who want to help analyze acoustic data or support future fieldwork. If you’d like to get involved in this project or others like it, reach out to Pacific Wild at info@pacificwild.org. We’d love to connect you. And if you’d like to donate to this project, you can do so here.
Stay tuned later this year for an update on what the data reveals, and what it could mean for the future of ancient forest conservation in B.C.
