Birdpass
English
Common Murre

Common Murre

Uria aalge

Identify the Common Murre by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

  • Download on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play

The Common Guillemot, or Common Murre, is a sleek black-and-white auk of the cold North Atlantic and North Pacific. It spends most of its life at sea and comes ashore only to breed in dense colonies on narrow cliff ledges, where each pair lays a single pear-shaped egg on bare rock. It is a powerful underwater diver that “flies” with its wings to depths of over 100 m.

Did you know?

  • Its pear-shaped egg rolls in a tight circle rather than off the ledge.
  • Chicks jump from the cliffs before they can fly, guided by their father's calls.

Voice

Call

About the species

Identification

A streamlined black-and-white seabird: the head, back and wings are dark and the belly white; it stands upright on rocks. The bill is fairly thin and straight. It is easily confused with Thick-billed Murre, from which it differs in its slimmer look and thinner bill without a pale gape line; the flanks show dark streaks. Some birds have a white eye-ring and line (“bridled” form). In winter the face turns white.

Family

Alcidae

Size

Large (crow)

Colours

black, white, brown

About the habitat

Cold, open seas over continental shelves; breeds on steep sea cliffs and rocky islets, often among other auks and cormorants.

Diet

Mainly small shoaling fish such as sand eels, herring, sprats and capelin, as well as crustaceans and squid, caught by wing-propelled dives; the chick is fed fish carried one at a time.

Behaviour

Flies fast and low over the waves in lines. It breeds in densely packed colonies on cliff ledges, making no nest and incubating the egg on its feet. After about three weeks the chick jumps from the ledge to the sea before it can fly and is accompanied and fed by its father at sea, while the mother stays at the ledge. After breeding, adults moult and are flightless for several weeks.

Sources

Photo: DickDaniels (http://theworldbirds.org/), CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Common Murre RWD1.jpg

Sound: Sonothèque ADVL, XC1041354, CC0 1.0 https://xeno-canto.org/1041354

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions, CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_murre

See also