Pigeon Guillemot (Cepphus columba)

Description: Pigeon guillemots have a dark brown-black plumage with a white spot of feathers on each wing. Most distinct about this bird is the bright red coloration of their feet and inside their mouths. These birds are part of a family of birds called alcids, which includes puffins, auks, and murrelets.

Habitat: The geographic distribution of pigeon guillemots spans across the Pacific Ocean from Russia to North America. Like their relatives, these birds live out on the open ocean but breed and nest along cliffs like the cliffs of Haystack Rock. However, pigeon guillemots feed closer to shore, whereas their cousins feed farther out at sea.

Nesting: Pigeon guillemots make their nests in the cracks and crevice on cliff faces. At Haystack the guillemots concentrate their nests on the lower sections of the rock, particularly on the South facing wall. Guillemots are one of the earliest nesters at Haystack, often laying their 1 to 2 eggs in April or May. They incubate for 26 to 32 days and then feed the chicks for 29 to 54 days before the young leave the nest. Unlike puffins—which carries up to a dozen fish in its mouth at once to take to its young—the pigeon guillemot usually carries just one fish at a time. When they chicks have matured, the parents lead them out of the nest and care for them in the ocean for several weeks before they learn to fly.

Diet: Pigeon guillemots like to eat small fish, worms, and crustaceans that they find along the seafloor where they forage.

Tide Pool Tidbits:

• Similar to the common murre, pigeon guillemots have a type of bumpy texture on their upper jaw called palatal denticles which helps them hold onto fish. In order to grip the fish (or other prey) with the denticles, these birds use their tongues to press the prey into the roof of their mouth. 

• In order to attract a mate, male pigeon guillemots will march in circles around a female to flaunt their bright red feet.

• Since these birds live on steep cliffs, they have to know how to traverse vertical terrains. To do so, they rapidly flap their wings to help themselves hover as they climb up sheer cliff faces with their claws and webbed feet.

Reference: The Cornell Lab, Audubon