Guillemots

The guillemot is a dark chocolate and white coloured seabird which can usually found on Cornwall’s steep coastal ledges and you can notice a Guillemot colony from a distance as they can be noisy birds!

The female Guillemots lay just one egg per year and, once the chick reaches three weeks old, they are encouraged to dive off the cliff edge and spend the rest of maturity with their father, learning to catch their food by diving into the water utilising their large wings to swim after prey such as fish, crabs and molluscs.

Guillemots are very easy to identify with a darker chocolate upper-body and lower body pure white which comes all the way up to their neckline. Although in the winter Guillemots tend to have white faces.

During the breeding season, we frequently see Guilletmots  around our nearby offshore islands which hold some of the largest seabird breeding colonies in Cornwall, full of Guillemots, Razorbills, Cormorants and more Seabirds.

How to identify a Guillemot:

• Body length – 38-45cm
• Wingspan – 64-73cm
• Chocolate upper body & white lower body
• Narrow pointed beak
• Darker bill than body