A Lifer Gained

Back in August, while I was writing up my blog posts about my trip to Nova Scotia, I spent a lot of time scrutinizing my photos while deciding the best ones to include. I was going through my photos from our trip to the Bird Islands IBA when I discovered a photo of this bird among my many photos of the Atlantic Puffins, Razorbills and Black Guillemots swimming in the ocean:

Common Murre

I got a horrible sinking feeling when I realized that this wasn’t a Razorbill as I had thought, that I actually didn’t notice this bird while I was photographing it – and that it would have been a lifer! At that point on the boat tour I was photographing the birds on the water, trying to get some decent photos of the different sea birds. They were too far to identify without the binoculars so I wasn’t paying attention to which species I was photographing. The only black and white alcids I actually saw (and identified) were Razorbills and Black Guillemots. This is neither – but looks like a cross between the two. When I checked my field guide, I realized it was a murre. However, there are two murre species possible on the east coast – Common Murre, which is quite numerous, and Thick-billed Murre, which is much less common – so I asked my friends on Facebook what they thought it was. The consensus was that this was indeed a Common Murre: Thick-billed Murre is blacker with a well-defined white wedge into the throat area, and has a white line along the cutting edge of the mandible. Also, Common Murre is the “default” murre in those parts.