The Thick-billed Murre, Arctic Auk

Northern Penguin-like Bird of Sea Cliffs and Continental Shelves

May 5, 2009
Rosemary Drisdelle

Thick-billed Murre - Chris Dau, USFWS

The Thick-billed Murre, among the birds commonly referred to as auks, is a common northern sea bird - it swims well and breeds in large colonies.

With an estimated world population of 22 million, the Thick-billed Murre, Uria lomvia, is probably even more numerous than the Common Murre. Large numbers of Thick-billed Murres breed within the Arctic Circle and remain year round in areas where there is some sea ice.

The Northern Equivalent of the Penguin

Murres are auks, or alcids, a group that also includes murrelets, auklets, puffins, razorbills, guillemots, and dovekies. Though smaller than most penguin species, murres have much in common with them. They:

eat fish, small crustaceans and other small ocean creatures found in abundance on continental shelves. They sometimes range long distances from the colony in search of food.
have very dark or black backs and white breasts: the black makes them difficult to see against the dark water from above, while the white helps them blend in with the surface from below.
have small wings and are awkward on land, but have exceptional swimming ability. Murres can fly, but if they were larger, they wouldn’t be able to.
gather in large noisy colonies each year to breed, always returning to the same place.

Life Cycle of a Thick-billed Murre

Murres can live more than twenty years, hunting for fish in northern waters and breeding on sea cliffs:

Murre adults begin to breed at two to three years of age; they stay with the same mate and return to the same colony year after year.
The female lays one egg on a sea cliff ledge without building a nest.
Both parents take turns tending the egg, which hatches in just over a month. Then the parents take turns tending and feeding the chick.
After the chick leaves the cliff at about three weeks of age, the father feeds it and teaches it to fish on its own for a month or more.

Interesting Facts About Thick-billed Murres

The Thick-billed Murre is an unusual bird in a number of ways:

Eggs are laid on narrow rock shelves – the young leave before they are able to fly, gliding down from cliffs on immature wings.
The male parent moults while caring for the fledgling in the water. Both are flightless as they begin a swimming migration that may span enormous distances. The birds probably swim the first 1600 km (1000 miles).
The deepest recorded dive of a Thick-billed Murre reached a depth of 210 metres (690 feet). The birds can move at a speed of 2 metres per second (6.5 feet) under water.
Diving birds can stay under water for up to three minutes.
Though the Thick-billed Murre is not usually considered a game bird, humans have hunted the species for food for thousands of years.

The Thick-billed Murre is not threatened but it is thought to be declining for various reasons including hunting. In the future, conservation efforts may be necessary.

Sources:

"Bird Fact Sheets: Murres." Hinterland Who’s Who.

Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds. Perrins, Christopher ed. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 2003

Sea & Coastal Birds of North America. Leslie, Scott. Toronto: Key Porter, 2008.

Rosemary Drisdelle - Rosemary Drisdelle has been published many times as a nonfiction writer and several times as a poet. Her first book, Parasites: Tales of ...