Return of Bird of the Week: Parakeet Auklet

We’re continuing to look at Alcids, one of the families of small, diving seabirds of the Northern Hemisphere. This is the first auklet we’ll look at, the Parakeet Auklet, a species of the North Pacific Ocean.

This is a beautiful seabird whose white irides (the area of the eye surrounding the iris) stand out dramatically from the black head, along with the striking, ornamental white facial plumes. The bright orange bill is nearly round. The breeding colonies are not large, and not densely populated, but you’d think otherwise from the sound, near-continuous whiney calls during courtship.

Parakeet Auklets have the widest range of any of the Alaskan auklets, spanning the northern Gulf of Alaska, most of the Bering Sea, the north Pacific south of the Aleutian Islands, and the Sea of Okhotsk…