The owl, the mouse and the murrelet. How manmade climate change could be pushing species to the brink in ways rarely imagined.
by Larry Powell A Scripp's murrelet chick ( Synthliboramphus scrippsi) . Humans hunted its cousin, the Great Auk, to extinction in the 18 hundreds. A U.S. Nat'l. Park Service photo. A new study finds, complex changes in climate are threatening yet another species - this time a little diving seabird known as the Scripp's murralet (above). But this time, it isn't because of direct impacts from severe weather events, as is often the case. Rather, it is how those events are interfering with traditional interactions between a predator, the barn owl (below) and its two main prey, the deer mouse and the murralet. The three species breed on the channel islands, off the coast of California. The study focused on Santa Barbara, the smallest. Barn owl (Tyto alba). Photo by Peter K. Burian. In-depth research by two American and two Canadian scientists, documents a fascinating but insidious train of events that could be leading to the little seabird