NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



19 



Like all of the Auks, Murres and Puffins, this species is eminently gregarious, 

 particularly in the breeding season. It is found in great numbers throughout the 

 Arctic Ocean and on nearly all the islands north of Asia, Europe and America. On 

 this side of the Atlantic it breeds from Nova Scotia northward. Tens of thousands 

 of these birds congregate to breed on the rocky islands, depositing and incubating 

 their single egg close to one another on the shelves of the cliffs. The birds sit side 

 by side, and although crowded together, never make the least attempt to quarrel. 

 Clouds of birds may be seen circling in the air over some huge, rugged bastion, form- 

 ing a picture which would seem to belong to the imagination rather than the realis- 

 tic. They utter a syllable which sounds exactly like murre. The eggs are so numer- 

 ous as to have commercial value, and they are noted for their variation in ground 

 color and markings. They vary from white to bluish or dark emerald-green in 

 ground color; occasionally unmarked specimens are found, but they are usually 

 handsomely spotted, blotched, lined in various patterns of lilac, brown and black 

 over the surface. In some the markings are confused zigzag lines that look like 

 hieroglyphics. The eggs are large for the size of the bird, measuring from 3. to 3.50 

 long by 1.95 to 2.10 broad; pyri-form in shape. 



30. CALIFORNIA MURRE. LJria troile californica (Bryant.) Geog. Dist. 

 Coasts and islands of the North Pacific, breeding from California north to the Pry- 

 bilof Islands. 



Mr. Emerson says that the California Murre is the most common sea fowl on the 

 Farallon Islands, and they do not seem to diminish in number, notwithstanding 



30. CALIFORNIA MURRES ON THE FARALLONS, (From The Nidologist,) 



the wholesale destruction of their eggs for commercial purposes. The birds begin 

 to lay by the middle or latter part of May. . Fresh eggs can be found as late as Au- 

 gust. This is due, more or less to the many robberies to which the birds are sub- 

 jected, and they are compelled to lay several times before they are left undisturbed 

 by the eggers. So telling is the effect due to constant laying that the eggs deposited 



