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ursulav. She's home from a birding trip and she's seen huge numbers of birds, among the least interesting of which, mentioned only in passing, were rhino auklets. How could I not google something called a rhino auklet?
It turns out - you could see this coming - that the rhinoceros auklet (photo) is a kind of puffin. I already knew that the familiar Atlantic puffin, fratercula arctica, is not the only puffin. The internet is full of pictures of puffins with extravagant eyebrows or strange bulbous beaks, which are not just the funny looking kids (as we doctors call them) of the Atlantic puffin, they are different kinds of puffin entirely, tufted and horned varieties of puffin. But how does an auklet, even a rhino auklet, get to be a puffin? Shouldn't it be an auklet? Or indeed an auk?
The Wikipedia article on auks doesn't actually explain what is going on, but it does at least set the mystery out clearly: auklets and puffins are two tribes of the same subfamily of auks (the rhinos have simply moved in with the family next door). Auklets should not be confused with little auks (alarmingly cute little black and white numbers, whose Latin name is Alle Alle); nor indeed with Great Auks, which are extinct (we have seen the monument on Papa Westray to the Great Auk, but that's another story). Little and great auks are mixed up with the guillemots, which I am trying not to (not even the wonderful spectacled guillemot).
Dragging myself away from the guillemots, I fell among murrelets. The marbled murrelet nests up trees, if it can find them (though "ts habit of nesting in trees was suspected but not documented until a tree-climber found a chick in 1974 making it one of the last North American bird species to have its nest described.") The ancient murrelet is so called because itshair - I beg its pardon, its head feathers are streaked with white (photo: note the absence of long grey beard and glittering eye). It lays its eggs in burrows, but the young are taken out to sea within a few days of hatching. The ancient murrelet lives in the North Pacific, but in spring 1990 one was blown far enough off-course that it ended up on Lundy (Wikipedia repeats the story that the same bird returned to Lundy the following spring, but quite reasonably feels that citation is needed).
Meanwhile, in California,Ano Nuevo Island has become so eroded that rhino auklets which nest there risk their burrows crumbling away midseason. So conservationists have been installing artificial burrows - and since plastic isn't durable enough, they have involved ceramics students from the California College of the Arts (video).
Finally, just one more baby bird photo (no, I have no idea what it is). And now we shall never know, because the link is gone.
ursulav. She's home from a birding trip and she's seen huge numbers of birds, among the least interesting of which, mentioned only in passing, were rhino auklets. How could I not google something called a rhino auklet? It turns out - you could see this coming - that the rhinoceros auklet (photo) is a kind of puffin. I already knew that the familiar Atlantic puffin, fratercula arctica, is not the only puffin. The internet is full of pictures of puffins with extravagant eyebrows or strange bulbous beaks, which are not just the funny looking kids (as we doctors call them) of the Atlantic puffin, they are different kinds of puffin entirely, tufted and horned varieties of puffin. But how does an auklet, even a rhino auklet, get to be a puffin? Shouldn't it be an auklet? Or indeed an auk?
The Wikipedia article on auks doesn't actually explain what is going on, but it does at least set the mystery out clearly: auklets and puffins are two tribes of the same subfamily of auks (the rhinos have simply moved in with the family next door). Auklets should not be confused with little auks (alarmingly cute little black and white numbers, whose Latin name is Alle Alle); nor indeed with Great Auks, which are extinct (we have seen the monument on Papa Westray to the Great Auk, but that's another story). Little and great auks are mixed up with the guillemots, which I am trying not to (not even the wonderful spectacled guillemot).
Dragging myself away from the guillemots, I fell among murrelets. The marbled murrelet nests up trees, if it can find them (though "ts habit of nesting in trees was suspected but not documented until a tree-climber found a chick in 1974 making it one of the last North American bird species to have its nest described.") The ancient murrelet is so called because its
Meanwhile, in California,Ano Nuevo Island has become so eroded that rhino auklets which nest there risk their burrows crumbling away midseason. So conservationists have been installing artificial burrows - and since plastic isn't durable enough, they have involved ceramics students from the California College of the Arts (video).
Finally, just one more baby bird photo (no, I have no idea what it is). And now we shall never know, because the link is gone.
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Date: 2012-01-25 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 11:04 am (UTC)But you're quite right about alle alle - I'd been hearing it as "'allo, 'allo", which is even worse.
And if these are tautonyms, what does that make troglodytes troglodytes troglodytes?
(Names, we loves them)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 12:08 am (UTC)I find the whole subject of sea birds to be rather auk-ward, personally.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 11:05 am (UTC)And despite the colouring, I suspect it's a baby rhino - but I can't prove it.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 12:24 am (UTC)It's not a blue-footed booby?
(It's adorable.)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 11:07 am (UTC)It is, isn't it?
It's not a blue-footed booby?
From the context, it's probably a rhino chick, but I can't find any reference to the blue feet, and - well, they are sort of noticeable, aren't they?