Birds Posters
Murres
Uria is a genus of seabirds in the auk family known in Britain as guillemots, in most of North America as murres, and in Newfoundland and Labrador as turr.
These are medium-sized birds with mainly brown or black plumage in the breeding season.
They breed on the coasts of the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
During breeding, the common murre populations of the Pacific Ocean range from coastal areas of western Alaska to central California.
The common murre is primarily a pelagic species. It spends the majority of its time at sea except for during breeding season.
At first glance, the common murre appears penguin-like, as the breeding adults are dark brown-black on the head, neck and back with a white underbelly and white tipped secondary feathers.
They are about 38-43cm in length and stand upright like a penguin when on land.
They have dark, long, and slender bills and dark greyish-black feet and legs.
They have a wingspan of 64 to 71 cm.
Common murres can fly 200 kilometers from the nest to find food for their chicks, and may dive as deep as 100 meters for food.
Courtship displays including bowing, billing and preening. The male points its head vertically and makes croaking and growling noises to attract the females.
The eggs vary in color and pattern to help the parents recognize them, each egg is unique.
The Thick-billed Murre is also known as Brunnich's Guillemot, after the Danish zoologist Morten Thrane Brunnich.
The Pacific race is larger than the Atlantic race, especially in bill dimensions.
The thick-billed murre can dive to depths of close to 600 feet. It uses its short, stubby wings to "fly" through the water.
Adult birds are black on the head, neck, back and wings with white underparts. The bill is long and pointed. They have a small rounded black tail.
The lower face becomes white in winter. This species produces a variety of harsh cackling calls at the breeding colonies, but is silent at sea.
They differ from the Common Murre in their thicker, shorter bill with white gape stripe and their darker head and back;
the "bridled" morph is unknown in U. lomvia - a murre has either a white eye-stripe, or a white bill-stripe, or neither, but never both.