Abstract
It began last summer at the beach.My husband, Steve and I had gone to the Oregon coast in pursuit of tranquility and a respite from our enjoyable, yet arduous job of caring for sixty-plus birds. We hadn't planned a schedule. We hadn't wanted anything to do but walk along the sand, listen to the ocean's roar and pick up a few shells. We picked up our shells, most of them broken. And we picked up a seabird, exhausted, starving and floundering clumsily in the wet sand. Though we didn't realize it at the time, we had discovered a murre, the most common seabird to the Pacific Coast. (Funny, I'd always thought that title belonged to the ubiquitous seagull.)