The spectacled guillemot or sooty guillemot (''Cepphus carbo'') is a

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same envir ...

in the auk family.

Description

This species is about with red legs, black bill, and a blackish iris. The breeding adult spectacled guillemot is distinctive, mostly plumaged dull sooty-black except for conspicuous white "spectacles" on the face In adult non-breeding plumage, the underparts are white, uniformly tipped very pale grey-brown. Transitional birds are like breeding adults, except the underparts are scaled with white. Sexes are alike, but juveniles are separable from adults. There are no subspecies.

Range

The spectacled guillemot's range is restricted to the northwestern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

: throughout the

Sea of Okhotsk The Sea of Okhotsk ( rus, Охо́тское мо́ре, Ohótskoye móre ; ja, オホーツク海, Ohōtsuku-kai) is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean. It is located between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands ...

and the

Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; rus, Кури́льские острова́, r=Kuril'skiye ostrova, p=kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva; Japanese: or ) are a volcanic archipelago currently administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

and on the northern island of Hokkaidō in Japan. Its range overlaps with that of the closely related pigeon guillemot, though it extends further north. Artyukhin Yu.B. and V.N. Burkanov (1999). ''Sea birds and Mammals of the Russian Far East: A Field Guide'', Moscow: АSТ Publishing – 215 p.

References

* Harrison, Peter (1991). ''Seabirds An Identification Guide'' {{Taxonbar, from=Q917150 Cepphus Guillemots Birds described in 1811