Little auk

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The little auk (Europe) or dovekie (North America) Alle alle is a small auk, the only member of the genus Alle. Alle is the Sami name of the long-tailed duck; it is onomatopoeic and imitates the call of the drake duck. Linnaeus was not particularly familiar with the winter plumages of either the auk or the duck, and appears to have confused the two species.<ref name=job>Template:Cite book</ref> Other old names include rotch, rotche,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> bullbird,<ref name=":0" /> and sea dove, although the latter sometimes refers to a relative, the black guillemot.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

They breed on islands in the high Arctic. There are two subspecies; A. a. alle breeds in Greenland, Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard; and A. a. polaris on Franz Josef Land. A small number of individuals Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait with additional breeding individuals thought to occur on King Island, St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island and the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> They also formerly bred on Grímsey just north of Iceland, but are extinct there now.<ref name=EBBA2>Template:Cite book</ref> In winter, they disperse widely across the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, with the largest numbers in the Arctic close to the pack ice edge, and smaller numbers south to northern Great Britain in the eastern Atlantic, and Nova Scotia in the western Atlantic.<ref name = HBW>Template:Cite book</ref>

TaxonomyEdit

The little auk was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the other auks in the genus Alca and coined the binomial name Alca alle.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Linnaeus specified the type locality as Ocean of Arctic, Europe and America but this is now restricted to Scotland.<ref name=peters>Template:Cite book</ref> The specific epithet is from allē, the Lapp word for the long-tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The species was formerly placed in the genus Plautus,<ref name=peters/> but in 1973 this name was suppressed by the commission of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and now the little auk is the only species placed in the genus Alle that was introduced in 1806 by the German naturalist Heinrich Friedrich Link.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=ioc>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Two subspecies are accepted:<ref name=ioc/>

A. a. alle (Linnaeus, 1758) – Baffin Island (Arctic northeast Canada), northwest, east Greenland, north Iceland, Jan Mayen (northeast of Iceland), Svalbard (north of Norway) and Novaya Zemlya (north of northwest Russia)
A. a. polaris Stenhouse, 1930 – Franz Josef Land (northeast of Novaya Zemlya, in Arctic Russia); perhaps Severnaya Zemlya (north of central Russia) to St. Lawrence Island (Bering Sea, Alaska)

DescriptionEdit

This is the only Atlantic auk of its size, half the size of the Atlantic puffin, at Template:Convert in length, with a Template:Convert wingspan. The adult weight ranges from Template:Convert.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":1">Montevecchi, W. A., and I. J. Stenhouse. 2002. Dovekie (Alle alle). In The Birds of North America, No. 701 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.</ref> A. a. polaris is marginally larger than the nominate subspecies.<ref name = HBW/><ref name=":1" /> In breeding plumage, the head, neck, back, and wings are black, with a white trailing edge to the secondary feathers, and white fringes on the scapular feathers, and pure white underparts. The bill is short and stubby. They have a small rounded black tail. The lower face and fore neck become white in winter plumage.

Little auks produce a variety of twitters and cackling calls at the breeding colonies, but tend to be silent at sea.<ref name=":1" />

Behaviour and ecologyEdit

Food and feedingEdit

The flight is fast and direct, with rapid whirring wing beats due to their short wings.<ref name=":1" /> These birds forage for food like other auks by swimming underwater. They mainly eat crustaceans, especially copepods, of which a Template:Convert bird requires ~60,000 individuals per day (equivalent to Template:Convert of dry food weight),<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> but they also eat small invertebrates such as mollusks, as well as small fish. Recent evidence suggests that the little auk forages not by filter-feeding on planktonic prey, but by visually-guided suction-feeding.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> They feed close to the shoreline during the breeding season, and feed near ice edges and coastlines during the winter.<ref name=":1" />

BreedingEdit

Little auks breed in large colonies on scree slopes on marine cliffsides.<ref name = HBW/> They nest in crevices or beneath large rocks, and may build rudimentary nests by bringing small pebbles and/or old grasses and lichen into the cavity, where they lay a single egg.<ref name=":1" /> Their single pale greenish blue egg is placed in a crevice of the rocks.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Like other auks, they are monogamous and have high nest-site fidelity, meaning that the same cavity is often used as a nest site by the same pair, year to year.<ref name=":1" /> The eggs are generally incubated by both parents equally, for roughly a month (28–31 days), until chicks begin to hatch at about 25 days.<ref name=":1" /> Hatchlings generally weigh about 21 g and are unable to thermoregulate on their own;<ref name=":1" /> they are brooded for approximately 5 days until they are able to thermoregulate, after which they are only attended to for feeding by parents.<ref name=":1" /> The young fledge from their nests at an age of 26–29 days old, synchronously with others on the colony, usually at night.<ref name=":1" />

WinterEdit

All little auks migrate south by winter into northern areas of the North Atlantic. The species is also commonly found in the Norwegian Sea.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Late autumn storms may carry them south of their normal wintering areas, or into the North Sea, and can cause wrecks of these birds, along with other seabirds, at sea and occasionally on land.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The British record count was made at the Farne Islands in Northumberland following strong northerly gales on 9–11 November 2007, with 18,381 flying north on 9th and 28,803 on 11th.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The glaucous gull and the Arctic fox are the main predators of little auks at colonies, with other gulls and raptors predating the species as well.<ref name=":1" /> In some cases, the polar bear has also been reported to feed on little auk eggs.<ref name=":1" /><ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref>

Interaction with humansEdit

Due to their habit of feeding near shore during both summer and winter months, the species has been an important source of food for Inuit of Greenland, Baffin Island, and Labrador, as well as at parts of its southern range in eastern Canada.

Kiviaq is an Inuit food from Greenland. It is made by stuffing a seal skin with 300 to 500 little auks. Once full and airtight, the skin is sealed with seal fat and the little auks are left to ferment for 3 to 18 months under a pile of rocks. Caught in spring, little auks are a human food resource in winter.<ref name="Freuchen 1960">Template:Cite book</ref> However, Knud Rasmussen's death is attributed to food poisoning by kiviaq.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

On the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada, the dovekie is known colloquially as the bull(y) bird or ice bird.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> The birds were once hunted, stuffed with savoury dressing and oven-baked. It was a food of last resort to prevent winter starvation amongst the fisher people of Newfoundland's outport communities. Shot with BB pellets on ice pans off Newfoundland's south coast, a feed would consist of 5–6 birds per person. Similarly, a hunt continues to occur for murres in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and mainly acts as a subsistence hunt for traditional hunters, who shoot wintering murres near ice flows in coastal waters as a food source.

ConservationEdit

Although populations appear to be decreasing, this is not currently thought to be rapid enough to be of concern for the species in the medium term, especially as global little auk numbers are generally rather fluid.<ref name="iucn status 12 November 2021" /> Little auks have been shown to be able to buffer fluctuations in prey availability, caused by climate change, via plasticity in their foraging behaviour, which is likely to make accurate conservation assessments more difficult.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>