Murrelets At First Light

I'd have been happy in the awakening forest regardless, but I had a hopeful hunch that just maybe...

This is the view I had as I breathed in the smells of the nighttime forest and listened to the awakening world a couple of mornings ago. Of course, it would have pleased me immensely to capture one of those silhouetted murrelets winging across that dusky sky, but alas, that I’ve had to save within my memory. My shutter finger simply was not quite fast enough during any of those momentary glimpses.

Two mornings ago, while my road trip companion was still dreaming of redwoods in his room, I arose in mine, dressed, grabbed my camera and binoculars, tiptoed down the back staircase of the Curly Redwood Lodge and quietly started my car. I intended to greet morning’s arrival among giant redwoods, despite cool temps, low hanging clouds and occasional wisps of fog.

I headed up into the mountains, driving slowly, lights on and window rolled down, taking in every change in scent and scene as my truck rolled up the winding road from oceanside and into deep, old growth forest.

Three or four miles in, something about the shadowy, towering apparitions on the far side of the creek began to whisper louder, asking me to stop and as soon as I’d steered into a makeshift turnout, once my tires stopped rolling and I turned off the key, I could hear them, Marbled Murrelets, aka, fog larks, winging their way through the awakening gloom to their mossy nests high in the tallest trees on Earth. Then came the excited calls of these fish-feast bearing parents and their hungry young as they approach and are reunited at the nest. Like many seabirds, Marbled Murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) fly sorties back and forth to the ocean near their nest sites at dawn and dusk, preferring to visit their nests under cover of low light or darkness whenever possible to reduce encounters with predators. I was in just the right place at just the right time, which allowed me to witness a treasured few, silhouetted birds crossing a small patch of murky sky, winging toward their nests, and additionally, hear a group of them flying in, unseen, wings noisily slicing the air overhead, and finally, ultimately, to listen to dozens of them calling out, high-pitched, slightly gull-like cries and calls over the next half hour or so, presumably solo nestlings and their returning parents.

When that amazing little aural miracle had played above me for a while, after I had framed up and captured several exposures of the trees and sky in faint light, the ravens began, a family of four, who at first began conversing back and forth somewhat timidly, far in the distance and gradually made their way, tree by tree down the fern-floored creek valley until they spied me adjusting my camera and tripod, below. They positioned themselves strategically within a rough-spaced triangle of tree-branch vantages, high above, there to discuss, parents and children, my unexpected presence in their awakening universe. It is not clear just what their discussion entailed, whether I was cast as an early morning annoyance, a threat, or merely a daybreak curiosity. Regardless how I may have been judged within their teaching observations, there were at times so many raucous raven comments flying back and forth that I could scarcely make out the higher pitched cries and that occasional, flutter of wingbeats, those diligent Marbled Murrelet parents returning to their hungry nestlings laden with aquatic bounty or heading back toward the Pacific, except during pauses in emphatic, daybreak ravenspoke questions and ravencrawk pronouncements.

I invite you to listen along.