ONE MONTH BEFORE I left for the Peace Corps in August 1992, an unexpected visitor arrived at the Powers Ranger District office in the Siskiyou National Forest (now Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest). A man visiting the forest had found a bird unable to fly along the paved road adjacent to the South Fork Coquille River.

“It’s very unusual looking,” he said before opening the box in which he’d transported it to our office. “Got funny feet, all black and white, and I don’t know, it’s just a bit strange.”

As I listened to his story, I felt a familiar sinking feeling. People regularly brought in birds they’d found in the forest. Maybe they were owls or song- birds, frequently hit by cars or, like this one, just “sitting there” along the road. Maybe a young robin, or a young wren, or one of the many summertime sparrows had left the nest too soon with shaky flying abilities. Perhaps a spotted towhee, a species that is often in low shrubs, had made an ill-timed dash from one side of the road to the other. No matter the circumstances, the rescuers always expected us to save the bird.

Much to my surprise, the bird on this day was not a robin or a sparrow. It also wasn’t a wren or a Steller’s jay or a towhee. In fact, it wasn’t any kind of a songbird. The black-and-white youngster offering high-pitched chirps from the bottom of the box was a marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus). For the past three years, since moving to southern Oregon, I had done many inventories for these birds. The dawn surveys involved listening for the murrelets’ calls and watching the adults flying rapidly into and out of the tree canopy as they exchanged incubating duties or, later in the season, brought fish from the ocean to feed their young. On many occasions, I’d heard the parents’ keer-keer calls. Sometimes I saw them as well: small, black bullets of movement.

Until this very moment in our office, however, I’d never been closer to a murrelet than about 200 to 300 feet, or the height of an old-growth tree, with the birds at the top and me at the bottom. Of course, I’d seen photographs of adults sitting on the few mossy nests that had been found high in the canopy and juveniles and adults floating atop the Pacific Ocean or other salty, inland waters of the West Coast. One of the most difficult species to study due in part to its double life at sea and on land, the murrelet is not often observed up close.

This man looked at me hopefully. Like all animal rescuers, he had the best of intentions. His concern that this bird would be hit by a passing car was valid. Forest Service Road 33 is located south of Powers, Oregon, along the South Fork Coquille River. This section of road up to Agness Pass is paved, and though narrow and winding, a vehicle in a hurry can pick up great speed. The stunning Douglas fir trees growing in a ribbon along the river will make any tourist turn her gaze away from the roadway. Looking at the little chick, I wondered why a murrelet would be on the side of the road. A study published the previous year had concluded that murrelet young appeared to fly directly to the ocean upon leaving the nest rather than exploring the surrounding forest first. Apart from shuffling along a tree branch, murrelet feet never touch anything solid; they are either in the air or on the water. This youngster would not have been planning to end up on the road. It also would have had great difficulty getting airborne again if it had stayed there. Fortunately, it didn’t appear injured.

I told the man what he had found and described the bird’s rarity and the fact that it lived in both the forest and at sea. “Its survival is threatened,” I added, “by loss of forest habitat, as well as events in the ocean, like oil spills and gill netting. Currently, it’s proposed to be listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.”

He nodded. “Kinda like another spotted owl, huh?”

I acknowledged this vaguely, not wanting to get into a big conversation about spotted owls. Looking more closely at the murrelet, I admired the legs that sat very far back on its body, an adaptation that, along with the short, pointed wings, makes the murrelet a tremendous diver. The thick, short bill would eventually serve it well in the grabbing of small fish. The black-and-white coloration would provide a disruptive pattern to help the young bird blend into shimmering water surfaces.

“Can I leave it with you, then?” he asked. “Be a shame for it to die.”

“Of course,” I said with more optimism than I felt. Caring for a seabird was even less a part of my ad hoc rehabilitation experience than helping common birds such as robins and jays. Yet I knew enough to seek immediate help in this effort. Free Flight Wildlife Rehabilitation Center was only an hour’s drive away in the coastal town of Bandon. I knew the director, a passionate advocate for injured wildlife, and was sure it would be a simple matter for me to take the murrelet to Free Flight. I carried the box back to my desk and called them.

“We don’t have any room right now,” the woman who answered the phone told me. “In the next week, we’re planning to release some of our animals, and then space may open up. But right now, we can’t take any more.”

I closed my eyes. In two weeks, I was leaving for Santiago, Chile, to begin Peace Corps training. I had to wrap up several projects at work; prepare for a garage sale to get rid of many of my possessions; transfer whatever didn’t sell, along with my two cats, to my mother’s house in Tacoma, Washington; and say goodbye to my friends and family. There simply wasn’t any time to care for a baby murrelet. A hint of desperation entered my voice as I pleaded with the woman to make room for the bird.

“No, I’m really sorry.” Then she added cheerfully, “But we could give you some herring to feed the little guy.”

AS THE MURRELET CHICK peeped on my desk, I considered the problem of where to house it. My two cats were not going to tolerate a newcomer in our midst. Though neither feline had ever shown much interest in hunting, a helpless, young bird in a box would be too great a temptation. Thus, my first task was to find a cool, quiet place to keep it. Second, I had to drive to Charleston and fetch the herring. The latter would take two hours at least, but the chick was already used to waiting long stretches of time for its parents to fly in from the ocean with food.

After my curious coworkers had looked at the murrelet and returned to their work, the district botanist had a suggestion.

“Why don’t you take it to Sue’s house?” Shane asked.

Our supervisor, Sue, had just left on vacation and I had volunteered to water her plants and generally keep an eye on her place. It was a somewhat dark home that stayed cool in the summer months. It would be quiet and safe and perfect. Additionally, this was the early 1990s. Cell phones, email, and constant communication were all things of the future. I didn’t have to worry that Sue would send me a text wondering how things were going, and I wouldn’t have to confess that there was now a murrelet living in her home and, oh yeah, sorry, the place currently smelled of herring.

“Murray,” as the young bird was quickly dubbed, seemed to take easily to his new surroundings (I had no idea if the chick was a male or female, but as in the face of most gender uncertainty, at least at that time, the default was to a male identity). I found a larger box and placed some towels inside to replicate the mossy limb Murray had hatched on. The box went onto the kitchen table, and when I returned with the herring, he ate two whole fish in quick order. This would have been one more than he would have received from each of his parents as they alternated returning to the nest, but I figured he’d gone with- out food for some time and could use the extra nutrition. A few herring went into the fridge, the rest in the freezer. I breathed a sigh of relief. So far, so good.

THE COUNTDOWN TO THE federal listing of the marbled murrelet was in its final days during the summer of 1992. In response to a petition to list the species under the Endangered Species Act, the US Fish & Wildlife Service had been gathering scientific evidence on the murrelet’s conservation status. The greatest threat remained the loss of its nesting habitat — older, coniferous forest — through commercial timber harvest. This continued to be true despite the recent protection of large tracts of older forests on federal lands for northern spotted owl conservation. Even with vast amounts of the landscape no longer vulnerable to future harvest, most of the murrelet’s habitat was already gone. Also, much of what remained existed in isolated patches, affected by changes in temperature and susceptible to weather events such as windstorms, insects, and disease.

Additionally, murrelets use the landscape in very different ways from spotted owls. Where owls live full time in the coniferous canopy, murrelets essentially use the forest as a summer home, traveling primarily before dawn and after sunset during the breeding season across great distances between their nest and food supply. Where owls move freely between upslope and riparian habitats, murrelets generally stick to river corridors. Murrelets must have adequate cover and protection along their travel routes, as well as in the stands where they settle for nesting. Edges of forest, where trees have been removed, are ideal places for avian predators such as ravens, crows, and jays to congregate, and these birds often prey upon murrelet eggs or chicks.

Yet loss and alteration of forested habitat wasn’t, and still isn’t, the murrelet’s only challenge. At-sea risks included gillnetting, fluctuations in forage fish populations, pollution, and the risk of oil spills. From a practical standpoint, one must wonder if it might not have been better evolutionarily to become a nester on offshore islands, like other alcid birds. The commute for the murrelet would have been much shorter, the challenges limited to the sea, as opposed to both sea and land.

Watching Murray settle onto the towel after his meal and then close his eyes, my feelings of impatience vanished. It was a privilege to cross paths with this animal, at once so recognizable but also so mysterious. My life felt chaotic at the moment, but not so chaotic that I didn’t have time to do what I could for the murrelet. I still didn’t feel terribly hopeful about its chances. The current research in the early 1990s estimated a murrelet chick’s probability of survival as very low. My only hope was that Murray’s chances wouldn’t be too much worse with me.

AFTER A WEEK of caring for the murrelet, two things happened. One, I got a call from Free Flight saying they now had room for Murray. They would weigh him and continue to feed him until he reached a certain weight for release. I arranged to take him down the next day. The second event was that Sue returned home from her vacation.

“Looks like I didn’t leave you enough to do,” she said with a smile upon learning of her new roommate.

We took Murray outside for pictures before his car ride to the coast. He agreeably posed as if perched in his nest, the yellow, late-summer grasses providing a good contrast for his black-and-white plumage. Sue and I both held him to get pictures of his wings and feet while our coworkers gathered again to see him. Then we drove him to Free Flight in Bandon. It seemed likely that Murray was the first southern Oregon murrelet to arrive at his coastal habitat in a vehicle.

IN THE 30-PLUS YEARS since my experience with Murray, I’ve only seen murrelets on the water and have only heard a few calling inland during surveys in the late 1990s on the Siskiyou National Forest or during other fieldwork and campouts in the Olympics where I work now. Yet much of my job, now as then, has been spent thinking about the many challenges land managers face trying to understand and conserve them and their habitats. Currently, for me, the murrelet exists as a dot on a map where a historic survey documented its presence. The murrelet might also be represented by a tree on the landscape, a proxy essentially, that in theory could serve at some future date as a nest site. The species is one of many I write about in Forest Service environmental assessments where impacts from human activities are predicted and quantified. In more than three decades of research, there are hundreds of reports, status reviews, and legal documents about the murrelet. The amount of information is staggering, yet the questions remain numerous too.

In the Olympic National Forest, there haven’t been murrelet surveys since the late 1990s because the forest no longer harvests old growth. The primary method of supplying timber to local economies has transitioned to commercial thinning of second-growth stands, a habitat that is typically not used by murrelets. Yet there are still issues. Harvest operations are noisy, and noise can increase the levels of stress hormones in animals that may be using older forest nearby. People working and recreating in the woods sometimes leave garbage and this debris attracts ravens, jays, and crows, all predators of murrelets. The Forest Service works very closely with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to minimize these threats to the species because the ultimate goal is to create long-term habitat for both marbled murrelets and spotted owls while minimizing short-term disturbance.

Commercial thinning work in second-growth forests is currently done with the intent of creating older forest structure and complexity faster than will occur naturally. Silvicultural techniques, such as removing some trees to let in more sunlight and maintaining a range of sizes and species of trees, are sound strategies, and vegetatively speaking, they produce expected results — that is, larger trees in a more diverse stand. However, wildlife responses to these efforts are far less straightforward and far less predictable. Will a tree selected for optimal growth actually be used by a murrelet? Will a forested stand that is thinned become protected enough at some later time to provide a safe haven for a growing murrelet chick? Only biologists and foresters decades from now, or maybe even centuries, will know the answers to these questions. And it’s possible that even then they will not know for certain. It seems likely that marbled murrelets in the forest will still be as difficult to find in the future as they are in the present. Unless, of course, one happens to arrive on your door- step in a cardboard box.

This essay has been adapted from Wild Forest Home, Stories of Conservation in the Pacific Northwest (University of Utah Press 2024). Wild Forest Home is a collection of twenty-five essays by Betsy L. Howell describing her work as a wildlife biologist in the national forests of Oregon and Washington.