A small, sleek seabird of the North Pacific that lives a surprisingly dramatic life for something that looks, at first glance, like a floating, black-and-white football. It has a dark charcoal back and head, clean white underparts, and a sharp dividing line between the dark upper face and white throat. A fine white crescent behind the eye and a pale edging on the wing feathers give it a neat, crisp look at close range. The bill is short and dark, the wings narrow and pointed, and the body low in the water, so when it surfaces between dives it looks compact and torpedo-shaped, built for speed underwater as much as for flight in the air.

This murrelet is a warm-water specialist of the southern California and northern Baja California current system. During the breeding season, almost the entire world population is clustered around a small set of rocky islands and islets off southern California and northwestern Mexico, including Anacapa and Santa Barbara Islands in the Channel Islands and several Baja islands such as San Benito and San Jerónimo. Out at sea, Scripps’s murrelets favour deep, clear offshore waters beyond the continental shelf, where they feed mainly on small schooling fish—especially larval anchovies, sardines, and other young fishes—plus small crustaceans. They forage by diving and “flying” underwater with their wings, often in pairs rather than big flocks, popping up briefly before vanishing again with a quick flick and splash.

The breeding cycle of Scripps’s murrelet is one of the most remarkable among seabirds. Adults come to land only to nest, using rock crevices, narrow ledges, burrows, and pockets in dense vegetation on steep island slopes. There is often no elaborate nest—just a scrape or bare rock hidden from view. The chicks hatch fully feathered and mobile, and here the story gets wild: they are never fed at the nest. Within one or two nights, the adults begin calling from the sea; the chicks scramble out of the crevice, tumble or run down steep slopes—sometimes even leaping from low cliffs—and head toward the sound.

Distribution

Country

Population est.

Status

Year

Comments

Canada

2020

Non-Breeding

Mexico

2020

United States

2020