One of the things I had looked forward on my way to Norway to travel to the Arctic, was the chance to see and photograph Northern hemisphere seabirds in the UK. We spent a few stunning days at Bempton Cliffs and near the Farne Islands on the Northumberland coast and it was a delight to see the puffins, razorbills and common guillemots. I will eventually get to share more of those photos but my aim at present is to try and complete this Arctic travelogue.
Brünnich’s guillemot (thick-billed murre) are close relatives to the common guillemot (common murre) but marginally larger so are the largest extant Alcid following the extinction of the Great auk. They differ from the common guillemot in having a white bill stripe. They also lack there bridled form with a white eye ring and facial line that can occur in common guillemots.
They are distributed across the polar and sub polar northern hemisphere with 4 subspecies. Around Svalbard the birds we encountered were Uria lomvia lomvia which occur in the northern Atlantic. Other subspecies are located north of central Russia (U. l. eleonorae), north east of Siberia (U. l. heckeri) and east of Siberia/Alaska/northwest Canada (U. l. arra).
The overwhelming impression I had one seeing guillemots for the first time is that they looked like penguins flying in air rather than underwater. Interestingly, the name penguin was applied to penguins after they were first encountered by northern hemisphere explorers as they were reminiscent of the great auk (Pinguinus impennis), a large flightless alcid also know as penguin or garefowl. Despite their similarity in appearance and niche great auks and penguins were taxonomically unrelated. As with little auks and diving petrels looking and behaving in similar ways to exploit similar niches this is an example of convergent evolution by different groups of birds.
One intriguing moment highlighting the similarity to penguins was when we encountered a mirror calm sea and the guillemots were tobogganing over it as penguins do over snow. They were seemingly trying to evade the ship and continued tobogganing alongside the vessel for extended distances without taking flight. I suspect that they use small waves to assist their launch into flight and the smooth conditions were just not providing that help to get airborne.
Phjotos with Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 800mm f6.3 VR S
