Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Common murres mass in incredible densities on the bare ledges that serve as their nests.
Today, The Funks host 80 percent of the total northwest Atlantic population of common murres, a colony
that runs the entire length of the island. The natural history writer Franklin Russell vividly described the dens-
ity of the breeding birds when he visited there in the mid-1960s: “The murres were massed so thickly they ob-
scured the ground. The birds stood shoulder to shoulder, eyeball to eyeball. In places, they were so densely
packed that if one bird stretched or flapped her wings, she sent a sympathetic spasm rippling away from her on
all sides. All life was in constant, riotous motion.”
Although murres on The Funks nest on the flat terrain of the island, elsewhere they nest on precipitous
cliffs. Their choice of nest site on narrow ledges high above the rocky shore and the sea seems especially pre-
carious because they do not build a nest, but lay their single egg on the bare ground, or more often, on bare
