The marbled murrelet is a small seabird that feeds at sea but nests inland, laying a single egg on the broad, mossy limbs of old-growth conifers high above the forest floor. Its nesting habits long eluded researchers. Dependent on intact old-growth forest, the threatened species links the Olympic coast and rainforest, and its decline is tied to the loss of mature forest.
Here's a secret hidden in these big trees, one that took scientists ages to crack. A small, fast seabird called the marbled murrelet spends its whole life out on the ocean, bobbing in the surf, diving for fish. But every spring it flies miles inland and lays a single egg high in the canopy of an old-growth conifer, on a wide mossy limb hundreds of feet up. For decades nobody could find a nest. A seabird that breeds in the rainforest. It ties this whole park together, sea to summit, in one strange little bird.
Photo: TRinaud · CC BY 4.0
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