Birding In The National Parks: Where Are All The Kittlitz's Murrelets Going?
, The Kittlitz's murrelet is a unkindly 9-inch-long, 7-ounce feathered conundrum that might be doomed by climate change.It is a significant, glacier-reliant seabird that nests in amazingly inhospitable places and then goes north into the Arctic to winter.
Contrasting with nearly all other seabird species, the Kittlitz's murrelet does not nest colonially; pairs isolation from the saltwater to steep, rocky, remote slopes -- usually surrounded by glaciers -- to lay and nurture a single egg. And once summer ebbs, these murrelets -- like puffins and guillemots a member of the auk household -- spend the bulk of their time on the water, going ashore only to nest. As winter nears they don't CEO south with warmer weather, but rather head to the frigid waters of the northern Gulf of Alaska and even further north into the Chukchi and Bering seas.
"The species' unartificial history is just absolutely crazy, really. I mean, these non-colonial seabirds are linked somehow to tidewater glaciers, although not exclusively, and refuge up in this radical nesting habitat,” Michelle Kissling, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Waiting tells me, referring to the distant "nunataks," a native word for the craggy ridges and mountains surrounded by glacier and icefields.
