Three Arch Rock Reservation. 
Murres—Conclusion. 
The most comical feature about the murres is 
that they do their sitting standing up. They 
sit close for two reasons—to hold their legs 
on and to keep the gulls off. It was hard to 
see just how they covered their eggs effectively 
and kept them at the proper temperature. A 
murre will straddle its egg and then reach down 
and cover it up carefully with feathers so it 
is completely hidden. 
The peculiar top shape of the murre’s egg 
prevents it from rolling. The practical value of 
this can be seen every day on the sloping ledges. 
We tried several experiments with these eggs 
and found they were of such taper that not one 
rolled over the edge. When they were started 
down grade they did not roll straight, but swung 
around like a top and came to a standstill four 
or five inches down. The eggs were tough- 
shelled and a sharp push only sent one about 
nine inches before it whirled around on its own 
vertical axis. 
Of course where the ledges are steep a sudden 
commotion among the birds will send a number 
of eggs over the edge. I noticed one murre 
mother whose egg had been dislodged by the 
awkwardness of her neighbor. As it began to 
roll down the steep incline, her maternal instinct 
aroused, she hobbled after#it and checked it for 
an instant with her bill. It swung the opposite 
way and went tumbling toward the edge, the 
poor bird following with a mournful “Coo! coo! 
coo!” until it dropped to the rocks below where 
it was devoured by an ever watchful gull. 
A young murre seems to be born with a little 
more vigor than an ordinary chick; he has to 
have strength in order to kick himself out of 
such a tough shell. When he first sees daylight 
he is uniformly dusky in color, but he rapidly 
takes on a white front. When he is half grown 
the white extends to the throat. The old birds 
on the contrary have no white whatever on the 
throat and head. When a murre rookery is sud¬ 
denly startled into flight, the young scamper 
away and mass themselves close in against the 
rock wall. If an old murre stays on the ledge 
the youngsters will flock about her for pro¬ 
tection. 
One day I was passing through a rookery and 
all the old birds left except one in a little cranny. 
The neighboring chicks rushed in to get near 
her, but she knocked them right and left with 
the sharp thrusts of her bill. It was no use, 
however; in half a minute she was almost com¬ 
pletely buried under a bushel of squirming, 
climbing little brats. I pulled them out one by 
one till I counted thirty-three. 
On land the murres are as awkward as any¬ 
thing that ever grew a pair of wings. They 
have to flap and waddle along, bumping here 
and there, till they get a good start before they 
can clear the ground. It is amusing to watch 
one sweep in from the fishing ground and land 
on the rock. When about twenty feet away he 
begins to slacken speed, then he spreads his 
legs and back paddles awkwardly and strikes 
sprawled out. 
Late one afternoon our attention was caught 
by a gull that sailed out from the side of the 
rock about a hundred feet up. In his mouth 
he held a screaming young murre. High above 
the rock reef he let it drop. Instead of the 
CALIFORNIA MURRE AND YOUNG. 
youngster striking on the rock and being killed 
as the gull expected, he landed at the water’s 
edge with a splash. He came up paddling and 
started oceanward, crying for help. He had 
gone but a few yards when the gull swooped 
and caught him again. He flew to the reef, 
shaking the little fellow as a terrier does a rat, 
and would have made short work of him had 
we not hurled two boulders and stopped him. 
The little murre crawled up into a crevice. We 
examined him, but found no injury except a 
little blood on one wing. 
To watch a murre colony one would wonder 
why they persist in crowding so close together. 
Neighbors always seemed to be quarreling, hack¬ 
ing or jawing at each other. They are rarely 
hit because they know how to dodge so well. I 
have often seen a murre take out her spite on 
her neighbor’s chicks. I was watching gome 
murres. There were two matrons. The young¬ 
ster of one mother seemed to have gotten a 
little too near the other old lady, for she dealt 
him a rap on the side of the head. Instead of 
the chick’s mother avenging by striking back at 
her neighbor she suddenly reached over#and 
took her neighbor’s chick two sharp clips on the 
head. The old birds did not strike at each other 
once, but several times the chicks got the benefit 
of the quarrel until they dodged out of the way. 
The babel is continuous. Every one talks at 
the same time. The noticeable difference is that 
each individual raises her voice to the pitch of 
a squealing old hen caught under a fence, for 
she is not satisfied to talk to her nearest neigh¬ 
bors, but she has to scream above the clamor 
to the whole company along the ledge. 
As you look over a large series of murre eggs 
you see a perfect spring flower garden of tints. 
You might wonder who the artist was who de¬ 
signed a thousand of them and got no two alike. 
You find for a ground color pure white, various 
washes of gray and brown, and a dozen shades 
from light to deep blue. Upon this background 
is spread an elaborate pattern of splotches of all 
sizes and shapes, sometimes thickest toward the 
larger, sometimes on the smaller end, and often 
marked all overj from eggs with not a mark at 
all to those with tints of dusky brown and choco¬ 
late red to -velvety black. Some are daubed as 
with a brush, others scratched from end to end 
with a sharp pen and finished off with wild 
flourishes and scrawls. 
What of all this? Do you think nature has 
been wasting pigment for naught? Scientists 
have said that this variation in size, shape and 
color may be of use in helping the murres recog¬ 
nize their own eggs. 
I sat looking at a colony of murres crowded 
together on a broad shelf of rock. Is the nest¬ 
ing communal or not? Does each bird know 
its own mate? Does each mother know her 
own egg? Does she know her own chick from 
the hundreds surrounding her? It seems hardly 
possible. I looked at the throng and each in¬ 
dividual seemed exactly alike. I could not pick 
out a single one that I would have known had 
I turned away and looked a minute later. Land 
birds recognize their own nests by an acute sense 
of location. Here there are no nests and loca¬ 
tion counts for little or nothing. 
I questioned whether it was within a murre’s 
limited intelligence to know her own egg or 
chick when there were several hundred others 
scattered about on all sides. I thought all she 
wanted was a part in the big nest group and 
that she returned each time and planted her¬ 
self on the first egg she found, and like any 
barnyard fowl did not care whether she or her 
neighbor laid it. But this is not so. 
We lay stretched out on our stomachs on the 
ledge just above the big rookery where we could 
watch the ordinary run of life and not disturb 
the birds in any way. When a murre arrived 
from the fishing grounds he alighted on the outer 
edge of the table. Then, like a man in a Fourth- 
of-July crowd, he looked for an opening in the 
dense front ranks. Seeing none, he boldly 
squeezed in, pushing and shoving to right and 
