Cape Parry murres feed mostly near the colony, making trips up to 17 km to feed their chicks. As a result, their main core-use areas are mostly protected under the marine limits of the ANMPA. Chicks were fed mainly with small fish. Both parents forage in the same areas, but they were active at different times of the day. Females, smaller in bill size, only foraged during daylight, while males also fed during the Arctic night. Cape Parry murres dived down as much as 70 meters but made shallower and more frequent dives at night.
The most exciting result of our research was the discovery that after breeding, Cape Parry murres took a long westward journey of about 3,600 km toward the Bering Sea, as far south as the Aleutian Islands. As expected, males were slower than females reaching these grounds, given their parental duties with the chick. Although both parents take care of the chick at the colony for a short period (15-20 days), males alone finish raising their chicks at sea for at least one month. During this time, both the molting male and the growing chick are flightless and, therefore, vulnerable to ocean disturbances such as ship traffic, which is predicted to grow due to increasingly ice-free Arctic waters.
After working with thick-billed murres colonies at both ends of their latitudinal range, getting to work with Cape Parry murres was like putting the last piece of a puzzle together. Acquiring a better understanding of what the future may hold for this particularly isolated colony says a lot about the value of field science. We now have new insights into these interesting birds and what they are telling us about changing Arctic ecosystems, and we hope it is just the beginning of our efforts to learn more about these “penguins of the Arctic.”