Black Guillemot (Cepphus grylle)
The photo above by Joe McNally is from the COA 2022 Annual Meeting keynote talk by George Divoky about a study of the subspecies Mandt’s Black Guillemot in Alaska. No photo of the Connecticut bird is available.
STATE YEAR LIST, for Connecticut, for 2022:
During January birders reported 175 bird species, which initialized this year’s eBird CT “state year list”. FOUR species were added in February, and in March EIGHTEEN additional new species were added to our state year list (bringing the state year list up to 197 species as of the end of March). During April birders reported FIFTY-THREE additional species, bringing the state year list up to 250 species (actually up to 251, due to the 1 for the swallow-tailed kite which has not been reported to eBird yet).
RARE BIRD SPECIES of the month:
The top four rare species were selected to be the following, in this proposed rank order of rarity (for any time of year in CT), based mostly on the previous number of records in CT:
1. Black Guillemot. Found by Phil Rusch on April 19.
2. Swallow-tailed Kite. Found by Rob Craig and then Phil Rusch, on April 23.
3. Upland Sandpiper. Found by Phil Rusch on April 12.
4. Cattle Egret. Found by Bill Batsford on April 7.
Here is Phil Rusch’s eBird report for that Black Guillemot at Stonington Point on April 19.
https://ebird.org/checklist/S107473452 << click on this link to view the eBird checklist, which is also shown below…
The following dBird map show all the Black Guillemot’s ever seen and reported to eBird in the state of CT. Note that this species is less rare around Montauk Point, NY and Block Island, RI, and up the coast of other New England states, but it is very rare inside Long Island Sound (of course, Stonington Point is about as close as CT gets to ocean waters). This is why it is our #1 rare bird for April in CT, even more rare than our #2 Swallow-tailed Kite (see the two maps below)…
Remember that on this eBird map (as of May 1. 2022) that the BLUE icons show every eBird reporting location ever submitted to eBird (for every year) for that species, while the RED icons are just those birds sighted in the last 30 days (during April 2022, in this case).
The rarity of this bird in the Long Island Sound and all of CT is obvious from the small number of red (or blue) icons.
Swallow-tailed Kite (our #2 BOTM) eBird map for CT is shown below. Note that there are more blue icons for the kite (below) than for the guillemot (above) in CT.
https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/swallow-tailed-kite
Upland Sandpiper (our #3 BOTM) eBird map.
Cattle Egret (our #4 BOTM) eBird map.
Black Guillemot world range: Widely distributed in northern hemisphere…
REFERENCES:
Wikipedia: Black Guillemot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_guillemot
eBird article on Black Guillemot:
https://ebird.org/species/blkgui/US-CT
Birds Of The World link, regarding diet of this species:
https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/blkgui/cur/introduction
Including this about their diet,
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“Major Foods Items:
Species composition varies with geography, habitat, and season. Major fish (video)
prey include blennies (Blenniidae), sea scorpions (Scorpaenidae), herring (Clupeidae spp.), cod (Gadidae), sandlances (Ammodytidae), rock gunnels (Pholididae), pricklebacks (Stichacidae), and sculpins (Cottidae; Storer 1952a; Preston 1968; Slater and Slater 1972; Bradstreet Bradstreet 1979, Bradstreet 1980; Petersen 1981a; Bradstreet and Brown 1985; Cairns Cairns 1987c, Cairns 1987a; Ewins Ewins 1988d, Ewins 1988c; Gertz Lydersen and Weslawski 1989; Lonne and Gabrielsen 1992; Hayes 1993). Wide variety of other fish (video) taken occasionally (Cramp 1985a). Amphipods and mysids appear to be most important invertebrate prey (Preston 1968; Bradstreet 1980; Petersen 1981a; Bradstreet and Brown 1985; Cairns Cairns 1987c, Cairns 1987a; Gertz Lydersen and Weslawski 1989; Lonne and Gabrielsen 1992), with other taxa including sponges, jellyfish, ctenophores, polychaetes, mollusks, decapods, barnacles, copepods, euphausiids, isopods, pteropods, lamellibranchs, and cumaceans (Bradstreet and Brown 1985). Winter diet is poorly known, probably higher proportion of invertebrates (crustaceans, polychaetes, molluscs) than fish overall.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Clearly this is another bird species that depends on fish and related marine life. This was made clear in the COA Annual Meeting this March, which focused on Black Guillemots in northern Alaska relying heavily on Arctic Cod (aka Polar Cod).
Avibase:
https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/species.jsp?lang=EN&avibaseid=B5AA5952E13FE5F3
Audubon Guide to North American Birds:
https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/black-guillemot
“Diet: Varies with place and season. May include more fish in southern part of range, more crustaceans farther north. Fish in diet (mainly those living near bottom in shallow waters) include butterfish, blennies, sculpins, gobies, sand lance, cod, many others. Crustaceans include crabs, shrimps, mysids, amphipods, copepods, isopods. Also eats some mollusks, insects, marine worms, bits of plant material.”
Migration:
“Largely permanent resident, overwintering as far north as open water allows, including openings and edges in pack ice. Small southward movement in winter brings some annually to Massachusetts, rarely farther.”
WhatBird.com :
Crossley ID Guide to Eastern Birds:
APPENDIX:
Here is a live link to the latest CT State Year List, as of now, the moment you click this link…
https://ebird.org/region/US-CT?yr=cur&m=&rank=lrec
This is the eBird Connecticut running STATE YEAR LIST, the state list of bird species seen in 2022 thus far, as of end of April, by all birders using eBird (plus the Swallow-tailed Kite which is not yet shown on eBird). to us 250+1 species as of end of April.
Lets see how many new species the month of May will bring to CT, and track throughout the year how close each new month will get us to the state’s all-time 446 bird species ever seen here.
On May 1, 2022 the April part of this list was photographed and is displayed below (note the date column and the sorting by date)…
