Murres Murre pairs mate for life, returning each spring to their chosen nesting spot. The female lays a single egg on a bare cliff ledge, and a few weeks later, the fledged chick joins the male on an at-sea expedition to learn how to fly and feed. Murres by Laura Helmuth Biologist Mike Parker is a magician. He needs no smoke, but he does use mirrors mirrors, decoys, and loudspeakers. His audience is a seabird called the common murre, and his trick is to lure the birds back to a breeding site they abandoned after an oil spill more than a decade ago.
Murres breed in loud, crowded colonies on narrow cliff ledges.
The decoys, mirrors, and amplified recordings of calls are supposed to assure murres still looking for a place to settle down that everyone is doing it here. It isn't easy. Devil's Slide Rock juts 70 feet out of the Pacific Ocean. They said it would be impossible to work on that rock. Decoys, bird calls, and mirrors lure seabirds back to an abandoned rookery.