Medium-sized black-and-white seabird with a thin and sharp bill. Note red legs.
Nonbreeding birds in the high arctic (mandtii subspecies) are whiter overall than nonbreeding birds in the Atlantic.
Forages by diving, using its wings to propel itself underwater. Catches fish, worms, and other prey from near the bottom.
Potbellied black seabird with white underwings bordered in black.
Nonbreeding birds have whitish heads and underparts.
Nests on rocky coastlines.
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A medium-sized seabird with a heavy body and fairly short, pointed wings. It has a small head and relatively short neck. The bill is straight and sharply pointed.
Larger than a Pied-billed Grebe, smaller than a Surf Scoter.
crow-sizedOrnithologists have described up to 7 subspecies, 2 or 3 of which nest in North America. In Maine and southeastern Canada, arcticus is the nesting subspecies, while in Alaska, mandtii is the nesting subspecies. Some ornithologists also recognize ultimus as a distinct subspecies in the High Arctic of eastern Canada and Greenland; others combine it with mandtii. In adult nonbreeding plumage, mandtii and ultimus have snowy white body plumage; juvenile mandtii/ultimus have white-tipped secondary feathers, forming a white trailing edge to the wing. Some Black Guillemots that nest in western Greenland are mostly black in breeding plumage7, with little or no white on the wings. Such “dark-morph” birds are also much darker in nonbreeding plumage than others in this population, which acquire mostly snow-white plumage in winter.
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