July for me has always been the month of events. My birthday is right at the start of it, kicking things off with a bang. Then there’s usually all sorts of things that follow that – trips, meetups, hangouts with friends and family. The bird we’ll be discussing in this article happens to be well acquainted with summer social shindigs, and is permanently dressed to the nines in preparation for a big party. This month’s bird is the Common Guillemot (Uria aalge), known in Irish as Foracha.
Guillemots (pronounced gih-luh-motts, rhymes with kilowatt) are members of the Auk family, and they’re our most common Auk. The family name has nothing to do with music, but these birds sure do know how to make a racket. When we first encountered them on the Saltee Islands, we heard them long before we managed to spot their dapper little forms nesting on the rocks and cliff faces. Their charming, tuxedo-like summer plumage may fool you into thinking they share some relationship to penguins, but alas, the similarities are nothing but aesthetic.
Guillemots are related to another well-known bird however, as they are in the same family as puffins. It’s really to easy to tell when you see both birds skimming over the waves, fluttering their sharp little wings for all their worth. They won’t win any prizes for flying, but when it comes to diving, these birds get the gold. They’ve got impeccable speed and manoeuvrability underwater, regularly travelling to depths of between 30 and 60 metres. But they’ve been recorded to have travelled as low as 180 metres! Olympic athletes eat your heart out.
Despite their obvious propensity for being in water, guillemots have to come ashore to breed. This is the only time they’re really found on land, so we timed our trip well when we found a colony on Great Saltee last year. They’ve got no issue with sharing their space with other birds, and I think their presence might actually be unconsciously helping them out. You see, every time an egg-stealing scavenger flew a little too close for comfort, the whole guillemot colony would start bellowing their trumpet-like calls. Picture a birthday party’s worth of kids all playing kazoo as hard as they can, and you’ll get something similar to the experience. Despite how utterly cacophonous it was for us humans, I’m sure if I was a bird nesting on those cliffs, I would appreciate the heads up.
Guillemots only lay a single egg each year, so I can understand their intense attitude. Their eggs have lovely brightly-coloured shells, and are more pear-shaped than egg shaped. Since these birds don’t build nests, the eggs need to be large, strong, and properly shaped to get the best chance of surviving. Both males and females take turns incubating the eggs – one will sit while the other will go out to catch fish for them.
This lovely arrangement is made even lovelier when you learn that guillemots are monogamous. They’ll form long-term bonds that last through the cold winters that they spend apart from one another. They return to the same nesting grounds and colony year after year to find each other. No wonder they’re so loud, they have so much catching up to do! I bet the reunion parties each year are insane.
Oh, and speaking of insane, let’s talk about guillemot chicks. Guillemot chicks will leave the nest before they’re able to fly. They parachute off the cliff with down-covered wings, only three weeks old, hoping to make it into the chilly waters of the Atlantic. I remember being younger and watching a nature documentary that showed these chicks making their impossible jump, and being totally stunned when one hit the bottom of the cliff, bouncing harmlessly like they were made of rubber.
Why do they do it? Perhaps because at less than a month old, these birds are braver than you or I will ever be. The scientific community thinks it’s due to the nature of the parents having to fly back and forth to feed them, which wastes some time and thus means slower growth. Why bother waiting for dad to bring food back when I could just hurl myself off a cliff and go straight to the source?
Guillemot colonies can be found dotted all around our lovely cliffy coastline. Go to any of our most famous landmarks (the Cliffs of Moher, the Giant’s Causeway, Skellig Michael) in the summer, and you’ll probably be able to see them. These birds are an amber-list species, meaning while they aren’t in immediate danger, there is some cause for concern. Migratory seabirds like these ones are harder to help as you can’t just offer to conserve them when they are nesting within our borders. Saving these vital birds requires cooperation with other nations and protecting their international feeding grounds from overfishing. Who knows? Perhaps if we learned to work together like the guillemots do, the world would be a better place.
The Irish Bird Blog 