Krabbentaucher (Alle alle)

The Little Auk – the Penguins of the North

This little bird in black and white plumage is the smallest representative of the Alcidae family, which also includes the colourful puffin. You could call these Arctic sea birds the "tuxedo wearers of the North", which occupy the ecological niche of penguins in the Northern Hemisphere and also resemble them at first glance in appearance and behaviour. Just like penguins, they are good swimmers and divers and capture their food in the sea. When doing so they dive to depths of up to three metres. Little auks feed on small crustaceans such as krill, but also on plankton and small fish.

These coastal colony breeders are encountered from Greenland and Spitsbergen to Russia. Several million animals often spend the short Arctic summer together in a colony. They raise their hatchlings preferably on sheltered rock crevices and coastal cliffs, where they are safe from predators. The female lays her eggs in a meagre nest made of a few plant parts, sometimes directly on the bare rocks.

Parents brood intensively and take turns in doing so. During this time they are very faithful to their nest site. In their wintering grounds in the North Atlantic, however, the birds roam far and wide, occasionally on to the high seas.

One such traveller landed in October 1991 on the research vessel Walther Herwig II in the North Atlantic, in eastern Greenland. The crew brought the animal along to the German Oceanographic Museum, in whose collection it has been since then.