Auks, puffins and murres | Alcidae

Alken | Álcidos

Underwater the birds row with their wings, not their feet; the wings are therefore short and narrow, which allows dives of tens of metres but forces a fast, whirring wingbeat in the air and a laboured run-up across the water at take-off. In a number of species the catch is not swallowed but carried crosswise in the bill, sometimes a dozen small fish at once with their heads all facing the same way. Breeding takes place in dense colonies on cliffs, in rock crevices or in self-dug burrows; those that nest on a bare ledge lay a single, strongly pear-shaped egg straight onto the stone, with no nest material at all. In several species the young leaves the colony before it can fly: it drops down to the sea in darkness and is reared on from there by the male. The voice is a low growling, bleating or rattling that merges in a colony into a continuous drone; brightly coloured bill plates and head plumes are shed after the breeding season.