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  Profile

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  In flight

Seabirds

Black-legged Kittiwake

Rissa tridactyla

• rare
• 55 km/h
• Vulnerable

True ocean-going gull, only coming to land to nest on sheer cliffs. Names itself with its call: kitti-waaake.

Population

~14.6–15.7 million individuals globally, in continuing decline (~40% decrease over three generations since the 1970s)

Habitat

Highly pelagic seabird that spends most of the year far out at sea; comes to land only to breed, nesting in dense colonies on narrow ledges of steep sea cliffs, islands, and headlands free of mammalian predators

Fun fact

Unlike most gulls, the Black-legged Kittiwake almost never scavenges on land or follows fishing boats for offal near shore — it is a true open-ocean gull that spends the non-breeding months entirely at sea, only returning to precarious cliff ledges to nest.

Range

Circumpolar Arctic to subarctic North Atlantic and North Pacific; breeds from northeastern Canada and Greenland across Iceland, Europe, and Siberia to Alaska; winters at sea south to the mid-Atlantic US coast (St. Lawrence to New Jersey), West Africa/Sargasso Sea, and the western Pacific/China coast

Diet

Mainly small forage fish (sandeel, capelin, herring, walleye pollock, Arctic cod) caught by dipping or plunging at the surface; also squid, zooplankton (euphausiids, amphipods, copepods), polychaete worms, and jellyfish

Size

0.39 m

Wingspan

0.98 m

Lifespan

20 years