Figure 175. This Long-billed Murrelet, the latest ever found in California, was photographed on 27 December 1997 at Muir Beach in Marin County (1998-011; Alan S. Hopkins).

 

Figure 176. Long-billed Murrelets have reached California between late July and late December (see also Appendix H). The evident spike represents four late July and early August specimens recovered in 1981 and 1983 at Mono Lake, Mono County—the state’s only inland records.

 

Figure 177. Distribution of 15 Long-billed Murrelets accepted through 2003. The first four refer to specimens recovered from Mono Lake in Mono County during the period 1981–1983, but later records (1994–2003) are of birds found alive along the central and northern coast; see also Appendix H.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LONG-BILLED MURRELET Brachyramphus perdix (Pallas, 1811)

Accepted: 15 (75%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 5	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 4	Color image: none

The Long-billed Murrelet was classified by the AOU as a subspecies of the Marbled Murrelet (B. marmoratus) from the 19th (AOU 1944) to the 41st (AOU 1997) supplements to its checklist. In the latter year, following the genetic studies of Friesen et al. (1996), the AOU again accorded the Long-billed Murrelet the status of a species. The species breeds along Asia’s eastern coast, from Kamchatka south to northern Japan, and winters from the southern Sea of Okhotsk south along the coasts of Japan, regularly to northern Honshu and more rarely to southern Korea and the Ryukyu Islands (e.g., Okinawa). Numerous late-summer, fall, and winter vagrants have been recorded across much of North America, most appearing on inland bodies of water (e.g., Sealy et al. 1982, 1991; Mlodinow 1997). In the Old World, vagrants have been recorded in Switzerland, the British Isles, and Romania (BW 19:495).

California’s first Long-billed Murrelet, a recently dead adult male, was recovered on 9 August 1981 at Mono Lake, Mono County (Jehl and Jehl 1981). From 29 July to 6 August 1983, three more carcasses of adults were found at Mono Lake. The state’s remaining 11 records, all involving live birds, are from 21 July to 27 December along the coast as far south as Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz County (Figures 176, 177). See also Appendix H.

Detailed information on field identification of the Long-billed Murrelet has been provided by many authors, including Sibley (1993), Erickson et al. (1995), Mlodinow (1997), Lethaby (2000), Maumary and Knaus (2000), and Thompson et al. (2003).