By Stacia Kalinoski

NEWPORT, Ore. -- Scientists are constantly looking for new ways to study climate change. Oregon State University has found a source close to home. It's a colony of birds growing in size in Newport.

The murre colony has grown rapidly along the Oregon Coast at Yaquina Head, and their reproductive status is linked closely to ocean conditions. That's spurred the interest of OSU researchers.

This isn't your everyday bird watching. OSU researchers are zooming in on murres, who've flown in record numbers over to Yaquina Head from Gull Rock, forced out by bald eagles.

Seabird ecologist Rob Suryan recently started collecting more detailed data on the eagle disturbances, to give him a better picture of the murre colony.

"How that's affecting the reproductive success of these birds, how many eggs are lost," said Suryan.

While eagles and seagulls have snatched up thousands of eggs on some parts of the coast, the population has nearly tripled. Suryan says that makes murres the perfect colony to study. You can track how the food web affects population, one snapshot at a time.

"Forge fish are a key food item for many species out in the ocean," he said.

And these deep diving birds love the same herring and anchovies as salmon and halibut.

"And so these birds are a good indicator of the availability of those forge fishes," said Suryan.

So is, Suryan says, the temperature of the ocean. That's where climate change enters the picture. When ocean conditions are good, there's plenty for murres to prey upon.

"And that can help us understand how these changes in ocean conditions are affecting the diets and how frequently the murres are feeding the chicks," he said.

Making this study particularly important. Because, depending on what type of food these pictures show over the next year, murres could be one of the first seabirds to show the negative impacts of climate change.

"We do see a pretty striking pattern in the timing of ocean productivity and the timing of the Murs when they lay their eggs when they hatch,' sais Suryan.

Studying the impact of these birds takes years, compared to more immediate studies of ocean conditions, where scientists can look at ice or sediment cores to reconstruct the past.

That's not an option with birds. The research team will be out at Yaquina Head monitoring these birds for another week.