This book tracks our changing perception of the Marbled Murrelet from its historic status as an obscure seabird of the North Pacific, through its role as a flagship species for old-growth forest-conservation movements, to a realization that it is a truly amazing bird. It flies faster, commutes further, and lays a bigger egg than any of its neighbours and is the only species to have colonized the forbidding fiords of Canada’s west coast. Fifteen thousand years ago, it successfully exploited the last great bout of global warming at the end of the last ice age but may fall victim to the effects of ongoing climate change.