Little auk

Little auk
Breeding adult, Spitzbergen
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Alcidae
Genus: Alle
Link, 1806
Species:
A. alle
Binomial name
Alle alle
Subspecies[2]
  • A. a. alle - (Linnaeus, 1758)
  • A. a. polaris - Stenhouse, 1930
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  Year-round range
  Summer range
  Winter range
Synonyms

Alca alle Linnaeus, 1758

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.[3] Other old names include rotch, rotche,[4] bullbird,[5] and sea dove, although the latter sometimes refers to a relative, the black guillemot.[6]

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.[7] They also formerly bred on Grímsey just north of Iceland, but are extinct there now.[8] 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.[9]

  1. ^ BirdLife International (2018). "Alle alle". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2018: e.T22694837A131932114. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T22694837A131932114.en. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  2. ^ Gill F; D Donsker; P Rasmussen, eds. (2020). "IOC World Bird List". v10.2. doi:10.14344/IOC.ML.10.2.
  3. ^ Jobling, James A (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  4. ^ "Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary s. v. 'rotch'". Retrieved September 6, 2020.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary s. v. 'sea dove'". Retrieved September 6, 2020.
  7. ^ Halpin, Luke R; Willie, Megan MC (2014-01-01). "First Record of Dovekie in British Columbia". Northwestern Naturalist. 95 (1): 56–60. doi:10.1898/NWN13-21.1. ISSN 1051-1733.
  8. ^ Booth Jones, Katherine A. (2020). Keller, Verena; et al. (eds.). European Breeding Bird Atlas 2: Distribution, Abundance and Change. Barcelona: European Bird Census Council and Lynx Edicions. p. 406. ISBN 978-84-16728-38-1.
  9. ^ del Hoyo, Josep; Elliott, Andrew; Sargatal, Jordi, eds. (1996). Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 3, Hoatzin to Auks. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. p. 709. ISBN 84-87334-20-2.