Common Murre (Uria aalge) breeding success has been monitored in 1996-2004 at Devil’s Slide Rock, California as part of a restoration project related to the Apex Houston oil spill. During the 2001 breeding season, two separate cases of egg recovery by parent murres were observed. During the first event an egg was secured and incubated 60 cm from the original nesting site, while in the second case an egg was retrieved after rolling 85 cm. The first egg was lost within 24 hours, and the second disappeared within a day of its expected hatching date. We describe the circumstances surrounding these events, including the behavior of the parent murres during the egg recovery attempts, the subsequent fate of the recovered eggs, the microhabitat features associated with egg loss and other factors affecting the egg recovery ability of adult murres.