The Ancient Murrelet 



individual passion for obscurity. Brought to the light, the chick will not 

 rest for the fraction of an instant, but is off instead in a tireless quest 

 for a hidey-hole. One bird, in particular, which I was trying to photo- 

 graph, nearly wore a hole through my Job stratum. I had labored with 

 the creature for perhaps half an hour, in vain. Finally, I put it in the 

 bottom of a canvas canoe, divested of all hope of shelter. Not for one 

 moment would that pickaninny pause except through exhaustion, when 

 its collapsed condition would have reflected, I fear, upon the artist, and 

 might even have required explanation before the S. P. C. A. Upon recovery, 

 instead of perking up and taking a momentary glance about, as a young 

 gull would have done, it rose up and struck out for solitude, all with a 

 single impulse which the waiting camera could not resolve. 



Finally the chick won out. I returned it to its rocky cradle, and we 

 both heaved a sigh of relief. 



About the only way to find these little black rascals is to put your 

 ear to the teeming rocks and listen for the subterranean peepings. They 

 are adventuresome explorers, and it is doubtful if their own mothers 

 can always find them. 



No. 294 



Ancient Murrelet 



A. O. U. No. 21. Synthliboramphus antiquus (Gmelin). 



Description. — Adults in breeding plumage: Head and neck sooty brown, chang- 

 ing to black on crown and nape, an invasion of white from underparts on sides of neck; 

 a white stripe made up of sharply projecting white feathers, starts over each eye and, 

 running obliquely backward and downward, nearly meets fellow on nape; touch of 

 white on each eyelid; upperparts in general dark bluish ash, becoming brownish dusky 

 on wings, especially the edges and tips; the sides of neck ("shoulders") sharply streaked 

 with eruptive white feathers, like those of corona, upon a ground of sooty, which is in 

 turn continuous with that of sides and flanks; remaining underparts, including lining of 

 wings, pure white. Bill very small, the commissural length about twice that of culmen, 

 yellow or whitish, blackening at base and (more sharply) on ridge; feet and legs yellow- 

 ish with abrupt black line on back of tarsus; webs blackish, nails black. Adult in 

 whiter: More extensively and purely plumbeous, the black of crown duller and tinged 

 with plumbeous; throat finely mingled sooty brown, plumbeous, and white, in endless 

 variety of pattern; sides mingled plumbeous-gray (prevailingly), sooty black, and white, 

 in bold patchy pattern; special white feathers of corona and shoulders nearly obsolete; 

 invasion on sides of neck anteriorly not more extensive and not threatening to meet 

 fellow across nape [Coues' statement to this effect has caused much misapprehension]. 

 Young of the year: Like adult in winter, but white of underparts invading sides of head 



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