STUDYING GUILLEMOTS IN HUDSON STRAIT 
     
    
   
   
    
     by Vicki Friesen, Sherwood . ‘ 
     
    
   
   
    
     Many Natural History Society mem-. 
     
     bers will remember Sue Stephenson's talk 
     
     last fall on her Willow Ptarmigan work 
     
     with Kathy Martin at Laparousse Bay, 
     
    

    
     Manitoba. After hearing this talk, I 
     
    

    
     became enthusiastic about the idea of 
     
    

    
     arctic research and mentioned this to 
     
    

    
     Geoff Hogan. Geoff connected me with 
     
    

    
     David Cairns, a Carleton University PhD 
     
    

    
     student, researching Black Guillemots / 
     
     (Cepphus grylle) in Hudson's Strait. 
     
    

    
     Subsequently I was hired as David's re- 
     
    

    
     search assistant last summer. 
     
    

    
     Black Guillemots, sometimes known as 
     
     "sea pigeons", are pigeon-sized birds 
     
     closely related to puffins and to the ex- 
     
     tinct Great Auk (all three being members of the auk family, Alcidae). Guillemots 
     
     breed from the Arctic Circle to Maine and may be seen along the coasts of PEI during 
     
     the summer. Most people are familiar with their breeding plumage, black with white 
     
     underwings, white upper wing patches, and bright red feet and mouth lining. Their 
     
     winter plumage, mottled white with the white patches on black wings, is less familiar 
     
     to most people since the birds scatter far out to sea during the winter (although 
     
     some remain in the St. Lawrence seaway). 
     
    

    
     Just as sea turtles, seals, and whales reverted to a seafaring lifestyle from 
     
     a terrestrial line of evolution, guillemots and other auks are almost entirely ‘ 
     
     oceanic. Guillemots spend their entire lives at sea, coming to land only for a few 
     
     months during the sunmer to raise their chicks. Their food is fish and invertebrates 
     
     which they hunt by 'flying' under water. In fact, their wings are so specialized 
     
     by reduction for swimming that the birds are only poor fliers. The Great Auk could 
     
     not fly at all. 
     
    

    
     Guillemots nest under rocks and in crevices, where they hollow out a nest cup 
     
     in gravel or sand. Laying begins in late June in Hudson's Strait (up to a month 
     
     earlier farther south), with usually two but sometimes only one egg being laid. 
     
     Incubation, commencing after the second egg, involves both parents and lasts for 30 
     
     days before the downy black chicks hatch, usually within a day of each other. Both 
     
     parents share the chick-rearing duties, carrying fish to the nest one by one in the 
     
     bill. As the chicks grow, they lose their down and assume a mottled white plumage. 
     
     About 35 days after hatching, still unable to fly, they waddle down to the shore 
     
     and start swimming out to sea. 
     
    

    
     One of the many places that guillemots breed is 'Pitsulak City' ('Pitsulak' 
     
     being the Inuktituk word for guillemot),an island off the coast of northern Quebec 
     
     with about 200 pairs of nesting guillemots. Here, David and Winifred Cairns and I 
     
     studied their breeding biology and feeding habits in 1983. David is studying guillemots 
     
     for several reasons. Because guillemots and auks in general spend most of their 
     
     time on the sea, they are highly vulnerable to oil spills (oil destroying the insul- 
     
     ative value of their feathers so that they die of exposure). The increase in oil 
     
     drilling in Hudson's Bay poses a potentially serious threat to them. Of all the auks, 
     
     guillemots are, in many ways, the most convenient to study. Unlike the murres, 
     
     which often nest in vast, cliff colonies and travel far offshore to feed, Black 
     
     Guillemots frequently nest on flat ground and fish within two to three miles of the 
     
     colony ; hence, they are more accessible fOr chick and feeding studies than their ‘ 
     
    
   
   
    
     6