The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) is a small seabird from the North Pacific. It is a member of the auk family. It nests in old-growth forests or on the ground at higher latitudes where trees cannot grow. Its habit of nesting in trees was suspected but not documented until a tree-climber found a chick in 1974, making it one of the last North American bird species to have its nest described. The marbled murrelet has declined in number since humans began logging its nest trees in the latter half of the 19th century. The decline of the marbled murrelet and its association with old-growth forests, at least in the southern part of its range, have made it a flagship species in the forest preservation movement. Taxonomy The marbled murrelet was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the grebes and loons in the genus Colymbus and coined the binomial name Colymbus marmoratus. Gmelin based his description on the "marbled murrelet" that had been described and illustrated in 1785 by both the English ornithologist John Latham and by the Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant. Both authors mention the two specimens in the Leverian Museum that had been collected in Prince William Sound during James Cook's third voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Cook described the birds in his account of the voyage. It is about the size of a partridge; has a short, black, compressed bill; with the head and upper part of the neck of a brown black; the rest of a deep brown, obscurely waved with black, except the underpart, which is entirely of a blackish cast, very minutely varied with white; the other (perhaps the female) is blacker above, and whiter below. The marbled murrelet is now one of three species placed in the genus Brachyramphus that was introduced in 1837 by the German born naturalist Johann Friedrich von Brandt. The genus name combines Ancient Greek brakhus meaning "short" with rhamphos meaning "bill". The specific epithet marmoratus is Latin meaning "marbled". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. The long-billed murrelet was formerly considered conspecific with the marbled murrelet. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 1998 found that the mitochondrial DNA variation was greater between these two forms than between the marbled murrelet and Kittlitz's murrelet. Description The marbled murrelet