MURRELETS 
245 
The Black Guillemot is one of the commonest inhabitants of our eastern 
seacoast and is known to nearly all who visit there. It is less gregarious 
than the other members of the family and usually nests alone and not in 
rookeries, though sometimes numbers are drawn together in localities by 
a community of interest. 
29. Pigeon Guillemot, le guillemot du pacifique. Cepphus columba. L, 13 -50. 
In summer (Figure 361, left) solid greenish black with conspicuous white wing patch and 
bright red feet and legs. .Juveniles (Figure 361, right) and winter birds: underparts white, 
above mostly black, but the white feathers are tipped with black and the black ones broadly 
edged with white, the wings being as in summer. 
Figure 361 
Pigeon Guillemot; scale, f . 
Summer Winter 
Distinctions, .lust like the Black Guillemot except the white wing patch divided by 
a black bar and is a Pacific instead of an Atlantic species. 
Field Marks. Summer adult: an all black bird with white wing patches and bright 
red feet. Too large for a murrelet and too small for a murre. 
Nesting. In crevices of the cliffs and under rocks on steep shores. 
Distribution. Coasts of Bering Sea and the Pacific Ocean south to California. 
One of the commonest inhabitants of our western seacoasts and 
familiar to all who frequent them. It is less gregarious than many of its 
relatives and nests alone rather than in rookeries, though sometimes com- 
mon interest attracts numbers to limited localities. 
This is the western representative of the Black Guillemot of the 
Atlantic, Cepphus grylle, from which it differs only in having the white 
wing-spot divided by a black bar. 
23. Marbled Murrelet. ea petite aeque marbr£. Brachyramphus martnoratus. 
L, 9-50. Plate XXIX B. Adult in summer: all w'ood-brown with reddish feather edgings 
on back and mottled softly with white on forward and under surfaces. Juveniles and in 
winter: blackish above, deeper on crown, and white below to chin. 
Distinctio7is. Similar in size and, in winter, in colour, to the Ancient Murrelet, but 
with longer and more slender bill. Winter birds otherwise differ from that species in having 
white chin and lores; back slightly bluish on feather edges instead of solidly so, and a 
broad white line on the back over the folded wing. 
Field Marks. In the summer adult, its small size and general blackness. Also the 
perky way in which it carries its bill and tail cocked up when sitting on the water. In 
winter plumage, when Ancient Murrelets are about, probably the small amount of black 
on the head and the less sharply defined pattern are the best distinctions. 
Nesting. In burrows in the ground. 
Distribution. The Pacific coast of Alaska to the State of Washington, wintering to 
southern California. 
All summer the Strait of Georgia, especially along the edges of the 
kelp beds, may often be sprinkled with these little sea-birds. They scatter 
over the smooth surface in fine weather, generally in pairs, floating high 
