BIOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF THE COMMON MURRE 93 



Appendix B 



Histories of common murre (Uria aalge californica) colonies in California, 1800-1978 



(prepared by H. R. Carter) 



As part of the assessment of the status of common 

 murres (Uria aalge californica) in California, it is 

 important to appreciate the long history of human 

 influences on colonies and birds at sea in this area. 

 Current conservation problems cannot be fully assessed 

 and conservation actions to best restore colonies or 

 populations cannot be fully conceived or implemented 

 without a reasonable concept of the original size and 

 distribution of the murre population. The known 

 histories of most murre colonies in California have not 

 been summarized previously, even though the history 

 of the South Farallon Island colony has been described 

 by early naturalists and others in some detail (e.g.. Ainley 

 and Lewis 1974) and the extirpated colony at Prince 

 Island has been well documented (Hunt et al. 1979). For 

 other murre colonies, information before 1969-70 (when 

 murre colonies were first inventoried collectively in 

 California [Osborne and Reynolds 1971; Osborne 

 1972]) was poorly recorded and poorly known. In 

 addition, little information was obtained in the 1970s 

 before the advent of more frequent monitoring of murre 

 colonies in 1979 (Sowls et al. 1980). In their major 

 summary of historical data on the birds of California. 

 Grinnell and Miller (1944) listed only five colonies in 

 central and southern California: three active colonies 

 (South Farallon Islands, Point Reyes, Point Resistance 

 [i.e.. mouth of Bear Valley] and two extirpated colonies 

 at San Pedro Rock and Prince Island (Santa Barbara 

 County). They also noted Dawson's (1923) report of 

 murres breeding on rocks of Humboldt and Del Norte 

 Counties but did not provide further details. Many murre 

 colonies were known much earlier than available sources 

 would indicate. 



In this summary, I collated information from 

 previous summaries and reported on substantial new 

 information from more obscure published and 

 unpublished sources to provide a more detailed summary 

 of historical information. I also included a more 

 extensive presentation of historical material for the 

 South Farallon Islands than found in previous sources. 

 For colonies other than the South Farallon Islands, 

 unpublished information and egg records in museum 

 collections (see Methods) have been especially 

 enlightening. Although doubtless incomplete, this 

 summary provides much additional historical 

 information not found in other summaries to date, 

 especially for central California colonies. Partial 



summaries of conservation problems of murres in 

 California prior to 1978 are found in several sources 

 (Osborne 1972; Ainley and Lewis 1974; Hunt et al. 

 1979; Sowls et al. 1980; Carter 1986; Ainley and 

 Boekelheide 1990; Takekawa et al. 1990; Sydeman et 

 al. 1997). Here, I focused on summarizing information 

 on direct impacts to murre colonies from exploitation, 

 visitation, or disturbance. Other less direct problems 

 (e.g., oil and gill-net deaths) will be discussed in greater 

 detail elsewhere in this assessment (Chapter 3). 



My approach to summarizing historical information 

 on murres involved the following considerations: (1) 

 revisiting all original sources cited by previous authors, 

 except where noted; (2) including literature and 

 unpublished information to allow the reader better 

 access to all available knowledge; (3) reporting 

 information as directly as possible from sources with 

 few judgements about the quality of information, except 

 where noted and where additional information was 

 provided with which the reader could make some 

 judgements; (4) using unpublished field notes of Charles 

 Clay, Laidlaw Williams, and Howard Cogswell (other 

 existing field notes were unobtainable, not easily 

 available, or not known); and (5) summarizing 

 (historical) human activities that probably affected 

 murre colonies, especially where the colonies were 

 poorly documented. Due to the variation between the 

 type and amount of information available from each 

 source, I chose not to use a shorter and more convenient 

 tabular format for presenting information that would 

 not allow adequate presentation of available 

 information. Although much new information is made 

 available here, this summary is incomplete and future 

 efforts may uncover additional information. 



Farallon Islands 



Summary 



The South Farallon Islands are the type locality for 

 the "California murre" (U. a. californica) and another 

 old name is the "Farallone Bird" (Coues 1903: Dawson 

 1923). Much information on breeding murres at the 

 South Farallon Islands has been documented (Ainley 

 and Lewis 1974; Doughty 1974; Carter 1986; 

 Takekawa et al. 1990; White 1995). This colony 

 probably once was the largest colony for the common 

 murre in California, Oregon, Washington, and British 



