spitzbergen-3
fb  Spitsbergen Panoramas - 360-degree panoramas  de  en  nb  Spitsbergen Shop  
pfeil THE Spitsbergen guidebook pfeil
HomeSpits­ber­gen infor­ma­ti­onWild­life → Black guil­l­emot

Black guillemot (Cepphus grylle)

Black guil­l­emots. Heley­sund, Spits­ber­gen

Black guillemot

Descrip­ti­on: With a length of 34 cm and a weight of 350-450 g, the Black guil­l­emot is a medi­um-sized auk, some­whe­re bet­ween Brünich’s guil­l­emots and Litt­le auks in size. They are com­ple­te­ly black, apart from a cha­rac­te­ristic white, oval spot on the upper wings, which can easi­ly be seen when the bird is sit­ting on the water. Legs and the insi­de of the beak are red. The sexes look ali­ke.

Distribution/ Migra­ti­ons: The Black guil­l­emot has a cir­cum­po­lar dis­tri­bu­ti­on in the high- and sub-Arc­tic. The Sval­bard popu­la­ti­on does not migra­te far, but spends the win­ter near the ice edge in regio­nal waters.

Bio­lo­gy: While sear­ching for food, bree­ding Black guil­l­emots stay clo­ser to the coast than other auks. They find their food, which con­sists of small fish and crustace­ans, near the sur­face. Com­pared to Com­mon and Brünich’s guil­l­emots, the Black guil­l­emots are rather unso­cial birds, as they breed in small, loo­se colo­nies in rock cre­vices, under lar­ge stones and on steep cliffs. Colo­nies lar­ger than 100 bree­ding pairs are the excep­ti­on. It is the only auk that nor­mal­ly lays two eggs, which both par­ents incu­ba­te for about four weeks. The chicks can fly after 30 to 40 days and are then imme­dia­te­ly inde­pen­dent.

Mis­cel­la­neous: The popu­la­ti­on in Sval­bard num­bers around 20,000 bree­ding pairs and they are a com­mon sight. The Black guil­l­emot is hun­ted to a limi­t­ed degree in Spits­ber­gen. When sit­ting on the water, it can dive quick­ly and will usual­ly do so at exact­ly the moment when you press the trig­ger of your came­ra.

Back

BOOKS, CALENDAR, POSTCARDS AND MORE

This and other publishing products of the Spitsbergen publishing house in the Spitsbergen-Shop.

last modification: 2014-10-27 · copyright: Rolf Stange
css.php