Family:
Brünnich’s guillemot, also known as the thick-billed murre, is a stout, sturdy auk that is similar to the common guillemot but with a shorter, thicker bill. It is one of the most numerous birds in the Northern Hemisphere. The breeding adult has black upperparts, a small rounded black tail, and white underparts that extend to a point in front of the dark neck. The head is black and there is a white streak along the cutting edges of the bill. The legs and feet are black.
In winter, Brünnich’s guillemot the lower face and throat becomes white but the darker colouring of the head remains with no white on the rear cheek or behind the eye.
During breeding season, it is noisy at colonies producing harsh, cackling calls, but is silent when out at sea. It will often breed in mixed colonies with kittiwakes and common guillemots.
Brünnich’s guillemots eat mainly small fish and planktonic crustaceans. They forage by diving from the surface of the water and swimming underneath reaching depths of 150 m and staying underwater for up to 4 minutes. They often feed far away from their breeding colonies.
Brünnich’s guillemots breed across the polar and sub-polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia and North America where they can be found on coastal cliffs.
In winter they move out to sea in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
