Little Auk
Encyclopedia
The Little Auk, or Dovekie (Alle alle), is a small auk
, the only member
of the genus
Alle. It breeds on islands in the high Arctic
. There are two subspecies
: A. a. alle breeds in Greenland
, Iceland
, Novaya Zemlya
and Spitsbergen
, and A. a. polaris on Franz Josef Land
.
This is the only Atlantic auk of its size, half the size of the Atlantic Puffin
at 19–21 cm in length, with a 34–38 cm wingspan. Adult birds are black on the head, neck, back and wings, with white underparts. The bill is very short and stubby. They have a small rounded black tail. The lower face and fore neck become white in winter.
The flight is direct, with fast whirring wing beats due to the short wings. These birds forage for food like other auks by swimming underwater. They mainly eat crustacean
s, especially copepod
s, but also other small invertebrate
s along with small fish
. They collect in large swarms before leaving their breeding rocks to head out to sea for food as well as when they return.
Little Auks produce a variety of twitters and cackling calls at the breeding colonies, but are silent at sea.
al mountainsides, where they have large colonies. They nest in crevices or beneath large rocks, usually laying just one egg
. They move
south in winter into northern areas of the north Atlantic
. Late autumn storms may carry them south of their normal wintering areas, or into the North Sea
. The species is also commonly found in the Norwegian Sea
.
In the book, The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder writes of her father finding a small bird that looked just like a Great Auk hidden in a haystack after an early October blizzard when the family lived near De Smet, South Dakota around 1880. The family never did find out what it was, but it appears to have been a Little Auk, blown south by the autumn blizzard.
The Little Auk's prey are chiefly crustacean
. The Glaucous Gull
and the Arctic Fox
are the main predators on Little Auks, and, in some cases, the Polar Bear
has also been reported to feed on their eggs.
is an Inuit dish from Greenland. It is made by stuffing a seal skin with 300 to 500 dovekies. Once full and airtight, the skin is sealed with seal fat and the dovekies are left to ferment for 3 to 18 months under a pile of rocks. Caught in spring, the dovekies serve as a food resource in winter.
Knud Rasmussen's death is attributed to food poisoning by kiviaq.
Auk
An auk is a bird of the family Alcidae in the order Charadriiformes. Auks are superficially similar to penguins due to their black-and-white colours, their upright posture and some of their habits...
, the only member
Monotypic
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group with only one biological type. The term's usage differs slightly between botany and zoology. The term monotypic has a separate use in conservation biology, monotypic habitat, regarding species habitat conversion eliminating biodiversity and...
of the genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
Alle. It breeds on islands in the high Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
. There are two subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...
: A. a. alle breeds in Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
, Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya , also known in Dutch as Nova Zembla and in Norwegian as , is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the north of Russia and the extreme northeast of Europe, the easternmost point of Europe lying at Cape Flissingsky on the northern island...
and Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...
, and A. a. polaris on Franz Josef Land
Franz Josef Land
Franz Josef Land, Franz Joseph Land, or Francis Joseph's Land is an archipelago located in the far north of Russia. It is found in the Arctic Ocean north of Novaya Zemlya and east of Svalbard, and is administered by Arkhangelsk Oblast. Franz Josef Land consists of 191 ice-covered islands with a...
.
Morphology and behaviour
Atlantic Puffin
The Atlantic Puffin is a seabird species in the auk family. It is a pelagic bird that feeds primarily by diving for fish, but also eats other sea creatures, such as squid and crustaceans. Its most obvious characteristic during the breeding season is its brightly coloured bill...
at 19–21 cm in length, with a 34–38 cm wingspan. Adult birds are black on the head, neck, back and wings, with white underparts. The bill is very short and stubby. They have a small rounded black tail. The lower face and fore neck become white in winter.
The flight is direct, with fast whirring wing beats due to the short wings. These birds forage for food like other auks by swimming underwater. They mainly eat crustacean
Crustacean
Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
s, especially copepod
Copepod
Copepods are a group of small crustaceans found in the sea and nearly every freshwater habitat. Some species are planktonic , some are benthic , and some continental species may live in limno-terrestrial habitats and other wet terrestrial places, such as swamps, under leaf fall in wet forests,...
s, but also other small invertebrate
Invertebrate
An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...
s along with small fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
. They collect in large swarms before leaving their breeding rocks to head out to sea for food as well as when they return.
Habitat and range
Their breeding habitat is coastCoast
A coastline or seashore is the area where land meets the sea or ocean. A precise line that can be called a coastline cannot be determined due to the dynamic nature of tides. The term "coastal zone" can be used instead, which is a spatial zone where interaction of the sea and land processes occurs...
al mountainsides, where they have large colonies. They nest in crevices or beneath large rocks, usually laying just one egg
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
. They move
Bird migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...
south in winter into northern areas of the north Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
. Late autumn storms may carry them south of their normal wintering areas, or into the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
. The species is also commonly found in the Norwegian Sea
Norwegian Sea
The Norwegian Sea is a marginal sea in the North Atlantic Ocean, northwest of Norway. It is located between the North Sea and the Greenland Sea and adjoins the North Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Barents Sea to the northeast. In the southwest, it is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a...
.
In the book, The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder writes of her father finding a small bird that looked just like a Great Auk hidden in a haystack after an early October blizzard when the family lived near De Smet, South Dakota around 1880. The family never did find out what it was, but it appears to have been a Little Auk, blown south by the autumn blizzard.
The Little Auk's prey are chiefly crustacean
Crustacean
Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
. The Glaucous Gull
Glaucous Gull
The Glaucous Gull is a large gull which breeds in the Arctic regions of the northern hemisphere and the Atlantic coasts of Europe. It is migratory, wintering from in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans as far south as the British Isles and northernmost states of the USA, also on the Great...
and the Arctic Fox
Arctic fox
The arctic fox , also known as the white fox, polar fox or snow fox, is a small fox native to Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and is common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. The Greek word alopex, means a fox and Vulpes is the Latin version...
are the main predators on Little Auks, and, in some cases, the Polar Bear
Polar Bear
The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...
has also been reported to feed on their eggs.
Conservation
Large numbers of Little Auks have been killed in several oil-spill incidents. but climate changes (warming) in Southern Greenland and Iceland seems to be the reason for the decreasing populations there.Little Auks as human food resource
KiviaqKiviaq
Kiviaq is a Canadian Inuit lawyer, politician, and former sportsman. He was the first Inuk to become a lawyer, and is responsible for several important advances in establishing the legal rights of the Inuit people; in 2001, he won the legal right to use his single-word Inuktituk name.Born outside...
is an Inuit dish from Greenland. It is made by stuffing a seal skin with 300 to 500 dovekies. Once full and airtight, the skin is sealed with seal fat and the dovekies are left to ferment for 3 to 18 months under a pile of rocks. Caught in spring, the dovekies serve as a food resource in winter.
Knud Rasmussen's death is attributed to food poisoning by kiviaq.