ML61243551

Age and sex

Immature Female - X

Tags

Dead

Media notes

Thick-billed Murre - immature female - specimen #1212368 in collection of Royal Ontario Museum

Observation details

Original observer: Alfred Kay. The bird, an immature female, is now in the collection of the ROM, #1212368. The tags attached to the bird give the date of collection as "18 December 1896". Mills (1981) lists another record that was reported by Mansell (1948) - a single bird shot by Alfred Kay on 21 December 1894 at Port Sydney. The date of this record, however, conflicts with the date on the collection tags on the ROM specimen, leading one to suspect that Kay may have collected two specimens – one in 1894 and one in 1896. William Melville (1897), who contributed a short note to the April 1897 Bulletin of the Michigan Ornithological Club about Kay’s 1896 record, stated that he had received a letter from Mr. A. Kay, Port Sydney, Muskoka, Ontario, who reported collecting a specimen of Uria lomvia in a dying condition on 18 December 1896, “the only one he has ever seen in that part of the country, where he has collected for twelve or fifteen years.” It seems likely that if Kay had indeed collected another specimen in 1894 he would have mentioned this in his letter to Melville. James Fleming (1907), who authored a major paper on the irruptive flights of this species, “The Unusual Migration of Brunnich’s Murre (Uria Lomvia) in Eastern North America”, cites Melville’s note as the source for his inclusion of the 1896 record. In a contribution that he wrote for the Ottawa Naturalist (1910 24(2):43), Alfred Kay, himself, further muddies the waters with the following statement: “On December 21st, 1894, I shot a Brunnich’s Murre on the river at my place three miles below Port Sydney. The river is known as the north-east branch of the Muskoka River. It had been frozen over, but owing to a few mild days it had opened up down the centre, leaving a strip of ice along the shore about thirty feet wide. The Murre was sitting on the outer edge of this strip of ice when I shot it. On skinning it I found it to be in a very emaciated condition. This was the first Brunnich’s Murre that I ever saw or heard of in these parts.” Kay’s statements, in the contribution that he penned to the Ottawa Naturalist and the letter that he wrote to William Melville, both written after 1896, seem to imply that he collected only one specimen as they each only make reference to one bird ever having been collected, but they provide conflicting information regarding the date of collection. The tags on the specimen in the ROM all give 18 December 1896 as the date of collection. This eBird record uses the 1896 date for the date of collection. Fleming (1907) states that there is a record of uncertain date from Beaumaris in the winter of 1897/98. Fleming most likely drew this record from a letter that he received from Dr. MacCallum, dated 20 January 1905. Fleming had written to MacCallum, who was the Chairman of the Ontario Game Commission, asking for any information that he might have received about occurrences of Murres in Ontario. Fleming was preparing a paper on Murre irruptions in eastern Canada that he would later present at the International Ornithological Conference in London, England. MacCallum informed Fleming that on 1 February 1898, Mr. John Willmott of Beaumaris, the Game Warden for Muskoka, had reported to him (MacCallum) that “two or three of these birds had been shot” at Beaumaris. Percy Taverner, who was well informed of bird sightings in the Beaumaris area, does not mention these birds in either his Ornithological Journal or Notes, but a 29 December 1897 entry in his Journal states that “… a Brunnich’s Murre sent down from Parry Sound” had been received at Spanner’s Taxidermy shop in Toronto. The Beaumaris records have been included here as hypothetical until further evidence can be found either supporting or eliminating them as valid records.

Technical information

Dimensions

1066 pixels x 800 pixels

Original file size

141.47 KB