Colony of nesting seabirds Kittiwakes on the Sea Cliffs near Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. SCO 11,117.
The kittiwakes (genus Rissa) are two closely related seabird species in the gull family Laridae, the black-legged kittiwake (R. tridactyla) and the red-legged kittiwake (R. brevirostris). The epithets "black-legged" and "red-legged" are used to distinguish the two species in North America, but in Europe, where R. brevirostris is not found, the black-legged kittiwake is often known simply as kittiwake, or more colloquially in some areas as tickleass or tickleace. The name is derived from its call, a shrill 'kittee-wa-aaake, kitte-wa-aaake'. The genus name Rissa is from the Icelandic name Rita for the black-legged kittiwake. Kittiwakes are coastal breeding birds ranging in the North Pacific, North Atlantic, and Arctic oceans. They form large, dense, noisy colonies during the summer reproductive period, often sharing habitat with murres. They are the only gull species that are exclusively cliff-nesting. The black-legged kittiwake is one of the most numerous of seabirds. Breeding colonies can be found in the Pacific from the Kuril Islands, around the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk throughout the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands to southeast Alaska, and in the Atlantic from the Gulf of St. Lawrence through Greenland and the coast of Ireland down to Portugal, as well as in the high Arctic islands. In the winter, the range extends further south and out to sea. In sharp contrast, the red-legged kittiwake has a very limited range in the Bering Sea, breeding only on the Pribilof, Bogoslof and Buldir islands in the United States, and the Commander Islands in Russia. On these islands, it shares some of the same cliff habitat as the black-legged kittiwake, though there is some localized segregation between the species on given auks are a family of seabirds related to the gulls and terns which contains several genera. The common murre is placed in the guillemot (murre) genus Uria (Brisson, 1760), which it shares with the thick-billed murre or Brunch's guillemot.
Size: 4972px × 4004px
Location: Bullers of Buchan, Fraserburgh. Aberdeenshire. Grampian Region. Scotland. UK.
Photo credit: © David Gowans / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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