Thick-billed Murre

Description:

The Thick-billed Murre or Brünnich's Guillemot (Uria lomvia) is a bird in the auk family (Alcidae). This bird is named after the Danish zoologist Morten Thrane Brünnich. The very deeply black North Pacific subspecies Uria lomvia arra is also called Pallas' Murre after its describer. They differ from the Common Murre in their thicker, shorter bill with white gape stripe and their darker head and back; the "bridled" morph is unknown in U. lomvia - a murre has either a white eye-stripe, or a white bill-stripe, or neither, but never both; it may be that this is character displacement, enabling individual birds to recognize conspecifics at a distance in the densely-packed breeding colonies as the bridled morph is most common by far in North Atlantic colonies where both species of guillemots breed. In winter, there is less white on the Thick-billed Murre's face. They look shorter than the Common Murre in flight. First year birds have smaller bills than adults and the white line on the bill is often obscure, making the bill an unreliable way to identify them at this age. The head pattern is the best way to distinguish first-year birds from Common Murres It breeds on coasts and islands in the High Arctic of Europe, Asia and North America, where it is one of the most numerous bird species.

Habitat:

Sitka Sound, about 15 miles west of Sitka