Black Guillemots
Scientific Name: Cepphus grylle
Description
Black Guillemots are common along the periphery of Great Duck Island, where they nest under large boulders in the island berm. In 2019 we recorded 520 Guillemots around Great Duck. Our high count from the lighthouse tower was 280, both numbers are down from our early years on the island. Guillemots typically lay from one to three eggs, which they incubate in crevices along the shoreline. Typical food includes “red rock eels” which are actually not eels at all, but rather gunnels.
Guillemot chicks are a perennial favorite with members of the Island Research team, but because band life in guillemots is low due to constant wear of the band on the rocky substrate of their nesting and roosting habitat we have stopped banding chicks or adults.
Guillemots are close relatives of puffins and razorbills, both of whom breed in small numbers to the east and west of Great Duck and in vast numbers in the far north (the Atlantic puffin is probably the most common seabird in the North Atlantic, with population estimates as high as 14 million! Every year we have 2-3 puffin nests at the south end of the island). In Maine, Great Duck shares with Penobscot Seal Island the title of “largest guillemot colony on the eastern coast of the U.S.”