A Guide to Etiquette for Living in a Brunnich’s Guillemot Colony

As the season ends at our summer retreat, the new generation will be preparing for their coming of age; their half-fledged flight. Other birds pander to their young’s unreadiness, but not us! We need to head South before the onset of winter and so the chicks have only half developed their wings and feathers. But they are perfectly capable of an unsteady glide from the cliff face to the sea below. Protocol is as follows; fathers head down to the sea where they wait, calling up, goading their young into taking the leap. “Come on you wimp.” “There’ll be no supper if you don’t grow up.” Mothers stay with the chicks and when they finally pluck up the courage to jump, will follow them closely, yelling words of derogatory encouragement. Sometimes a firm but motherly shove is required. 

We have a short wingspan compared to other birds, indeed we have the highest energy use per body size to keep ourselves in the air, and this does give us a rather clumsy appearance during flight, but no other bird, ones that can fly anyway, can compete with our abilities in deep diving and underwater antics. We can reach depths of around 180 metres, holding our breath for up to 5 minutes. Due to the ungraceful nature of our flight we have developed procedures for landing and taking off from the water. As we approach sea level, it is important to slightly pull up at the last second and then stop flying altogether so that we pause briefly suspended in the air. 

For take offs a great deal of water walking is required. Our stubby wings simply can’t generate enough lift for immediate ascension, so around ten frantic steps help give us that little extra thrust to get ourselves airborne.