Little auk: Where It Lives, Map & Facts

Where the little auk lives – recorded in 15 countries, with quick facts from Wikidata and an introduction from Wikipedia.

Scientific name	Alle alle
Group	Waders, gulls, terns & auks
Status	Least concern (Wikidata, IUCN category label)
Found in	15 countries
Continents	Europe, North America
Mass	28 g (birth weight)
Class	Bird
Order	Charadriiformes
Family	Alcidae

Where does the little auk live?

Open-licence (CC0 / CC BY) wild records published on GBIF place the little auk in 15 countries and territories across Europe and North America.

Countries with at least a handful of records (a minimum share of the species’ records, to leave out vagrants and escapes). Records with coordinates only; captive and fossil records excluded.

How big is a little auk?

Wikidata records the following for the little auk: mass 28 g (birth weight).

Is the little auk endangered?

The little auk’s conservation status recorded in Wikidata is “Least concern” (an IUCN Red List category label). Source: Wikidata.

What kind of animal is the little auk?

The little auk (Alle alle) is a bird in the order Charadriiformes and the family Alcidae, genus Alle. (Taxonomy from Wikidata.)

About the little auk

The little auk (Europe) or dovekie (North America) (Alle alle) is a small auk, the only member of the genus Alle. It breeds in huge numbers on islands in the high Arctic of the North Atlantic Ocean. There are two subspecies; A. a. alle breeds in Greenland, Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard; and A. a. polaris on Franz Josef Land. A small number of individuals also breed on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait, with additional breeding individuals thought to occur on King Island, St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island and the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. It also formerly bred on Grímsey just north of Iceland, but is extinct there now. In winter, they disperse widely across the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, with the largest numbers in the Arctic close to the pack ice edge, and smaller numbers south to northern Great Britain in the eastern Atlantic, and Nova Scotia in the western Atlantic.

Text in “About” is quoted from the Wikipedia article Little auk (revision 1359097526), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: lead section excerpted verbatim, formatting removed. Quick facts, taxonomy and status: Wikidata Q26470 (CC0). Countries and pin: GBIF.org occurrence records (CC0 / CC BY 4.0).