Common Guillemot

Description:

Guillemot or Murre is a large sized auk, or more generally a medium sized seabird roughly the size of a woodpigeon or barely bigger than smaller gulls. They are brown-blackish above, and white below - similarly to Razorbills, they also sport brown-blackish hood that covers the entire head, neck and throat.

Habitat:

Observed close shores of rocky islands in protected natural reserve "the 7 Islands Archipelago", a set of rocky islands off northern shore of Brittany, France. Here, in this reserve, they share the spots with razorbills and puffins and we observed these three species very close to each other (puffins present also in pics 1 and 3).

Notes:

This set of rocky islets has been a protected natural site since 1912 and classified as a Nature Reserve in 1976. Today, and so far, the Reserve is an undisputed kingdom of seabirds, and the access to these islands (actually, there are only five islands and two groups of rocks...) is very limited. You can visit the islands by the boat, while one can disembarque on foot only to one of the islands, les Moines. All others others are visited only rarely, and only by staff in charge of managing the place.