Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Charadriiformes > Alcidae > Alca > Alca torda

Alca torda (Razorbill)

Synonyms: Alca torda britannica
Language: French

Wikipedia Abstract

The razorbill (Alca torda) is a colonial seabird that only comes to land in order to breed. This agile bird chooses one partner for life; females lay one egg per year. Razorbills nest along coastal cliffs in enclosed or slightly exposed crevices. The parents spend equal amounts of time incubating. Once the chick has hatched, the parents take turns foraging for their young and sometimes fly long distances before finding prey.
View Wikipedia Record: Alca torda

Infraspecies

Alca torda islandica
Alca torda torda

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
5
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
26
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 10.8636
EDGE Score: 2.47347
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [4]  1
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Fledging [6]  17 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [3]  1,200,000
Incubation [4]  36 days
Mating Display [7]  Ground display
Mating System [7]  Monogamy
Maximum Longevity [4]  30 years
Migration [1]  Intercontinental
Water Biome [1]  Coastal
Wing Span [8]  26 inches (.661 m)
Adult Weight [2]  1.581 lbs (717 g)
Birth Weight [4]  64 grams
Breeding Habitat [3]  Coastal cliffs and islands, Coastal marine
Wintering Geography [3]  Atlantic Coast
Wintering Habitat [3]  Coastal marine
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [5]  80 %
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  20 %
Forages - Underwater [5]  100 %
Female Maturity [4]  4 years
Male Maturity [4]  4 years

Ecoregions

Name Countries Ecozone Biome Species Report Climate Land
Use
Scandinavian and Russian taiga Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia Palearctic Boreal Forests/Taiga

Protected Areas

+ Click for partial list (100)Full list (112)

Important Bird Areas

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Larus argentatus (Herring Gull)[11]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Alcataenia armillaris[12]
Alcataenia atlantiensis[12]
Contracaecum variegatum[12]
Hemistomum variegatum <Unverified Name>[12]
Stegophorus stellaepolaris[12]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2Storchová, Lenka; Hořák, David (2018), Data from: Life-history characteristics of European birds, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n6k3n
♦ 3Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
♦ 4de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 5Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 6Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 7Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 8Anatomy and Histochemistry of Flight Muscles in a Wing-Propelled Diving Bird, the Atlantic Puffin, Fratercula arctica, Christopher E. Kovacs and Ron A. Meyers, JOURNAL OF MORPHOLOGY 244:109–125 (2000)
♦ 9Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 10An estimate of summer food consumption of six seabird species in Iceland, K. Lilliendahl and J. Solmundsson, ICES Journal of Marine Science, 54: 624–630. 1997
♦ 11Diets of adult and chick Herring Gulls Larus argentatus argenteus on Ailsa Craig, south-west Scotland., M. Nogales, B. Zonfrillo and P. Monaghan, SEABIRD 17: 56-63
♦ 12Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0