If undisturbed it lays two eggs only; when robbed, it will keep on laying until it has produced six or even eight eggs; and the manager of the islands told me that he had found as many as eight eggs forming in a bird's ovaries when he killed and opened it in the beginning of the season.

The male bird regularly relieves the female on the nest, and also watches to resist the attacks of the gull, which not only destroys the eggs, but also eats the young.

The murre feeds on sea-grass and jelly-fish, and I was assured that though some hundreds had been examined at different times, no fish had ever been found in a murre's stomach.
The bird is small, about the size of a half-grown duck, but its egg is as large as a goose egg.

The egg is brown or greenish, and speckled.

When quite fresh it has no fishy taste, but when two or three days old the fishy taste becomes perceptible.