Part naturalist detective story and part environmental inquiry, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet
celebrates the fascinating world of an endangered seabird that
depends on the contested old-growth forests of the Pacific
Northwest for its survival.
"This chunky little seabird stole my heart." So confesses Maria
Mudd Ruth, a veteran nature writer perfectly happy to be a
generalist before getting swept up in the strange story of the
marbled murrelet. This curiosity of nature, which flies like a little
brown bullet at up to 100 miles an hour and lives most of its life
offshore, is seen onland only during breeding season, when each
female lays a single egg high on a mossy tree limb in the ancient
coastal forest.