Auks (Alcidae)

Common Murre (Uria aalge) - HBW 3, p. 709

French: Guillemot marmette German: Trottellumme Spanish: Arao Común
Other common names: (Common) Guillemot, Thin-billed Murre

Taxonomy: Colymbus aalge Pontoppidan, 1763, Iceland.
Birds of Faeroes sometimes separated as race spiloptera. Proposed race intermedia, for populations of small islands in S Baltic, probably invalid, as claimed differences probably reflect individual variation. Five subspecies recognized.

Subspecies and Distribution:

aalge (Pontoppidan, 1763) - E North America, Greenland and Iceland, through Faeroes and Scotland to S Norway and Baltic Sea.
albionis Witherby, 1923 - Ireland and S Britain through Brittany to W Iberia; Helgoland.
hyperborea Salomonsen, 1932 - Svalbard through N Norway and Murmansk to Novaya Zemlya.

See all 5 subspecies

aalge (Pontoppidan, 1763) - E North America, Greenland and Iceland, through Faeroes and Scotland to S Norway and Baltic Sea.
albionis Witherby, 1923 - Ireland and S Britain through Brittany to W Iberia; Helgoland.
hyperborea Salomonsen, 1932 - Svalbard through N Norway and Murmansk to Novaya Zemlya.
inornata Salomonsen, 1932 - E Korea and Japan (N Hokkaido) N through Sakhalin to Kamchatka, whence E through Bering Sea, Aleutians and W Alaska to NW British Columbia.
californica (H. Bryant, 1861) - N Washington S to California.