During breeding season, Crested Auklets produce a powerful citrusy scent in their plumage. Pairs perform a courtship display called “ruff sniffing”—burying their bills in each other's neck feathers to sample the fragrance.
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Ruff sniffs recorded: 0
WHY THIS BIRD MATTERS
Auklets are tiny messengers from a changing ocean.
Researchers monitor what auklets eat and how much nutritional stress they experience to understand how warming seas, changing sea ice, and shifting plankton affect the northern Bering Sea.
*“Least Concern” is not “no concerns.” Healthy colonies still depend on healthy oceans and long-term monitoring.
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Color is a clue. A plankton expert confirms the contents.
FIELD NOTE: THE PUKE PALETTE
Researchers read the ocean in what auklets bring home.
Adult auklets carry food for their chicks in a gular pouch under the tongue. After the birds offload that food at the colony, researchers scrape leftover regurgitation from the rocks and bring the samples to a plankton expert for sorting.
Orange samples generally mean lots of copepods; purple samples generally point to euphausiids. Tracking that diet over time helps reveal how warming water, changing sea ice, and a shifting zooplankton community are altering the food available to auklets.
