Subject: [Tweeters] LB Murrelet ID
Date: Nov 21 23:54:04 2008
From: sgmlod at aol.com - sgmlod at aol.com


Greetings All



Charlie Wright, Brad Waggoner, and I were birding an area called Ediz Hook on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. We encountered 300+ Marbled Murrelets. One bird stood out as different, and was not hard to re-find among this scattered congregation of murrelets. When viewing its right side, it was a dead ringer for a LB Murrelet. The bird was not close, to be sure. Most of the birds were clustered in displaying and/or feeding groups, or in pairs. This bird was, initially, alone. However, when it swam up to a Marbled Murrelet, it showed no structural differences, and then it turned around. Its left side showed a nice semi-collar, like a typical basic MAMU.?




The bird also looked darker backed, with less prominently white scapulars.




Stepping back a year or two.... a number of us gathered in the Puget Sound area to look for a Long-billed Murrelet (this was in December). We saw several birds that seemed to show partial alternate plumage, including one bird that was almost completely brown. Of those birds with just a bit of brown on the underparts, many appeared darker above (I wonder if the admixture of brown feathers into the gray makes the color look darker) with more limited white on the scaps. One bird showed a very MAMU-like head/neck pattern.




I put this forth as just another word of caution about identifying these beasts.?




Steven Mlodinow?