Bird of the Week – Thick-billed Murre

The close cousin of last week’s Common Murre, the Thick-billed Murre is slightly larger, slightly darker and has the distinctive whitish “gape” at the back of the bill. The Thick-billed Murre is believed to spend most of the year further offshore, in deeper water, than the Common Murre. It’s a challenge to tell the two species apart in the field. Here’s a comparatively rare shot of the two species, side-by-side. All of this is probably more about Alcids than most Mudpuppies ever wanted to know. It’s a peril of hanging around birders. But we’ll set Alcidae aside for a while…