Alle alle
Silhouette: Sheatherius · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~90% in a week >90%
The little auk (Europe) or dovekie (North America) (Alle alle) is a small auk, the only member of the genus Alle. It breeds in huge numbers on islands in the high Arctic of the North Atlantic Ocean. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island and the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. It also formerly bred on Grímsey just north of Iceland, but is extinct there now. In winter, they disperse widely across the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, with the largest numbers in the Arctic close to the pack ice edge, and smaller numbers south to northern Great Britain in the eastern Atlantic, and Nova Scotia in the western Atlantic.
The little auk was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. He placed it with the other auks in the genus Alca and coined the binomial name Alca alle. Linnaeus specified the type locality as Ocean of Arctic... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Svalbard | 🇳🇴 Norway | |
| 2 | Cape Breton Highlands National Park | 🇨🇦 Canada | |
| 3 | Acadia National Park | 🇺🇸 United States |
Likely
About 50% of wildlife watchers report a Dovekie sighting in Svalbard on a given day, based on 1,090 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 13th most-seen of the 48 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 90%, and over a week to over 90%, if each day is a fresh chance.
May
In that month about 60% of wildlife watchers report a Dovekie in Svalbard on a given day, against about 20% in September, the lowest month. November to January have too few records to rate.
Between 1 and 4 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Dovekie sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Yes
Of the 3 parks where we can rate Dovekie sightings, Svalbard has the highest daily chance: about 50%. Next come Cape Breton Highlands National Park (Canada, under 5%) and Acadia National Park (United States, under 5%).
Same family: Alcidae
The closest relatives of the Dovekie that you can see in Svalbard (family Alcidae, Auks, Murres, and Puffins) are Black Guillemot (about 90%), Thick-billed Murre (about 70%) and Atlantic Puffin (about 40%), with each one's daily chance of a sighting.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Dovekie is recorded against all the birds logged in Svalbard (1,090 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
