Cassin’s Auklet

Ptychoramphus aleuticus

These birds range from North America’s Aleutian Islands and south to Baja California’s central coast. Sometimes we find them north to Russian islands in the Bering Strait.

Nesting season varies with the abundance of prey, and often it falls in late autumn and winter. Typically, they dig burrows with their feet, but sometimes they opt for rocky crevices, or even cactus thickets. Cassin’s Auklets are very flexible in their choice of nesting terrain, and may choose high rocky cliffs, or low lying sandy flats to raise their progeny.

Today’s taxonomists recognize two subspecies of Cassin’s Auklet. Most researchers agree that further study is warranted to identify their differences and where there may be overlap.

• P. a. aleuticus breeds along the Pacific Coast from Alaska, south to Guadalupe Island off the Baja California coast (Mexico).
• P. a. australis breeds off the west coast of the Baja California peninsula, from San Benito Island, south to Isla Asunción and Isla San Roque

 We regularly see Cassin’s Auklets in waters off the San Diego coast. But when I have been on boat trips on the lookout for pelagic birds, the birds I saw were too far away for satisfactory images. It was not until my 2017 voyage to the Revillagigedo Islands that I found them off the central Baja California coast. While I was aboard the Shogun, I closed the distance enough to collect images I was not ashamed of.

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