Behavior and Breeding
The Marbled Murrelet feeds at sea both in pelagic offshore areas (often associating with upwellings) and inshore in protected bays and fiords. It feeds principally on sandeels, also taking herring, capelin and shiner perch. The bird has not been known to wander from the Pacific coast of North America, all inland and eastern Brachyramphus records being of the closely related Long-billed Murrelet.
The nesting behaviour of the Marbled Murrelet is unusual, since unlike most alcids it does not nest in colonies on cliffs or in burrows, but on branches of old-growth and mature conifers such as Western Hemlock, Sitka Spruce, Douglas Fir and Coastal Redwood, as far as 80 km inland. It lays one egg on a platform of lichen or moss on these branches (less often on the ground). In northern populations, murrelets nest on the ground among rocks, as do other related murrelet species. The egg is incubated for a month, then fed for around 40 days until the chick is able to fledge. The chick then leaves the nest and flies unaccompanied to the sea. Breeding success is low and chick mortality high.
Read more about this topic: Marbled Murrelet
Famous quotes containing the words behavior and, behavior and/or breeding:
“Consciousness is cerebral celebrity—nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and “symptomatic” effects—on memory, on the control of behavior and so forth.”
—Daniel Clement Dennett (b. 1942)
“The confusion of emotions with behavior causes no end of unnecessary trouble to both adults and children. Behavior can be commanded; emotions can’t. An adult can put controls on a child’s behavior—at least part of the time—but how do you put controls on what a child feels? An adult can impose controls on his own behavior—if he’s grown up—but how does he order what he feels?”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“A man’s own good breeding is his best security against other people’s ill-manners.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)