The Ancient Murrelet 
individual passion for obscurity. Brought to the light, the chick will not 
rest lor the fraction of an instant, but is off instead in a tireless quest 
for a hidey-hole. One bird, in particular, which 1 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, 1 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. 2 i. 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 
winter: 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 
1481 
