BIOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF THE COMMON MURRE 3 



assigned British Columbia murres to U. a. inornata, but 

 without additional substantiation (Guiguet 1950, 1972; 

 Jewett et al. 1953; Gabrielson and Lincoln 1959; Drent 

 and Guiguet 1961; Tuck 1961; Campbell et al. 1990; 

 Morgan et al. 1991). Given poor evidence of the 

 presence of U. a. inornata in British Columbia and little 

 geographic separation of British Columbia and 

 Washington colonies, we considered British Columbia 

 breeding murres to belong to the subspecies U. a. 

 californica. Small numbers of murres also breed in 

 southeast Alaska (Sowls et al. 1978). Geographic gaps 

 are present north of southeast Alaska and between 

 Forrester Island and British Columbia colonies; thus, 

 we considered that breeding murres in southeast Alaska 

 might belong to either subspecies. 



In this chapter, we summarize the natural history of 

 the common murre (U. a. californica) in California, 

 Oregon. Washington, and British Columbia. Our goal is 

 to provide a general summary of natural history for this 

 species, with emphasis on basic aspects of murre biology 

 in this geographic area. Several detailed summaries of 

 murre biology are available or in progress (e.g., Tuck 

 1961 ; Nettleship and Birkhead 1985; Gaston and Jones 



1998; Ainley et al., in preparation). However, these 

 excellent summaries focused on available published 

 research that, for the most part, has been more extensive 

 in the North Atlantic and Alaska and focused on certain 

 well-studied aspects of natural history. Our intent is to 

 provide ( 1 ) a general summary of published research 

 with reference to representative studies, (2) information 

 on aspects of natural history that have not been well 

 studied, and (3) a collation of scattered unpublished 

 information on natural history from this geographic area. 

 We hope this approach will provide a general 

 background on the natural history of the common murre 

 and generate additional research in California, Oregon, 

 Washington, and British Columbia. 



Methods 



We collated information about the natural history 

 of the common murre from published and unpublished 

 sources with emphasis on information from California, 

 Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. In this part 

 of the range of the common murre. extensive study of 

 the breeding biology and demography has been 

 conducted only at the South Farallon Islands, California 



Figure 1.1. Common murre ( Una aalge californica) in breeding plumage 

 at the South Farallon Islands, California (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

 Farallon National Wildlife Refuge). 



Figure 1 2. Distribution of the common murre on the Pacific coast of 

 the continental United States and Canada. Small numbers extend 

 south into northern Baja California, Mexico. 



