Monday 6 June 2016, week 3: Buldir Island, 22:01

As I look to the northeast in the mornings, I see clouds of small birds rising and falling as one: a changing shape dancing in the sky’s foreground. Captivating, these shapes are; they’re swarms of activity flying just above the water’s surface and shifting as they rise up and change direction.

These auklets – crested, least, parakeet, and whiskered – go about their business as little communities, basing their nests in crevices on talus slopes and venturing out to the waters of the Bering Sea to feed on plankton. The 4 species congregate and socialize near their nesting sites during varying activity periods throughout the day, but – as seabirds – they also spend a fair amount of time on the water.

Regardless of whether the auklets are incubating eggs in crevices, socializing on the surface, in flight, or on the surface of the water, there’s no denying the cuteness of their entertaining antics. Various animals have a term designated to indicate a grouping of said animal. A few examples (thanks for these, Lisa) include:

– a puddling of mallards
– a skulk of foxes
– a bloat of hippos
– a murder of ravens (Maybe it’s crows? Sorry, I have no internet to check this one.)

Lately USFWS employees of Alaska Maritime NWR have been wondering what to call swarms of flying auklets. According to Lisa, our FWS radio command central and biological science tech in Adak, we need a word to capture the “seething, roiling, lofting and plummeting of an auklet swarm.”

Entries are currently being submitted for an appropriate name, but Buldir’s own crew lead McKenzie has already come up with the winner, in my opinion. As one who has lost hours of sleep watching the aurora dance across the sky, I can confirm that what I’m witnessing here on Buldir is indeed

an aurora of auklets.