Sea Lion Caves News
Cliff Dwellers on the Oregon Coast
posted on 1972-03-05 00:08:00The most exciting season of the year on the Oregon Coast is fast approaching. Early in April the cliffs fill with great rafts of oceanic birds. The towering rocks that stud the coast from Brookings to Ecola State Park are transformed into noisy, exciting rookeries where courting cormorants, murres, guillemots and bizarre-looking puffins squabble, build nests or simply claim a bare rock on which to raise their young.
Three species of cormorants are found in the Northwest. These fish eaters rear their young in communes bulging with tightly packed nests lined with grass or seaweed. Hod Johnson of Sea Lion Caves notes that the Brandt cormorants arrive in early April and begin nesting a few weeks prior to the nesting of double-crested and pelagic cormorants. By mid-morning the birds are ferrying nest material plucked from a grassy knoll near the cave. When the nests are complete, the knoll stands nude.
Cormorants lay three to five chalky-blue eggs which require anywhere from 21 to 35 days of incubation, depending on the species. When the blind, naked nestlings hatch, the rookeries become bedlam. In an endless procession, parents lift off, dive into the sea and return to the quiet hunger calls of their offspring with bits of partially digested food. Each day the rookery becomes more dirty, noisy and odoriferous.
The pigeon guillemot is a nesting neighbor of the cormorant at Sea Lion Caves. This bird, which looks somewhat like a small crow blazed with white wing patches and vivid red legs, forsakes the open cliff for the safety of the cave. There among the brawling sea lions, the birds lay their eggs and rear broods of two in unlined rock crevices. If you wish to see these rookeries, visit the cave area between late April and mid-July.
Equally intriguing are the murre rookeries at Three Arch Rocks on Cape Meares. Here the murres gather by the thousands. In rather careless fashion, each female deposits her single egg on a narrow wind-blown rock ledge. Nature provides for the survival of the species by packaging the egg in an ingenious shape that prevents it from rolling off the cliff. The egg, formed like a boy's top, simply rolls in a tight circle should it become dislodged.
Comical looking tufted puffins, kissing cousins of the murres, also nest around the inlets at Arch Rocks. These strange looking birds (pictured on the cover) construct equally strange nests. Like the kingfisher, they dig nest tunnels in the earth in which to raise their offspring.
Readers wishing to familiarize themselves with the birds of the Oregon Coast will find a visit to the pioneer museum at Tillamook most rewarding. Admission is free. On display are 500 mounted specimens of birds and animals, along with nest and egg collections.
by Bernard Martin
