Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Many shearwaters are long-distance migrants, perhaps most spectacularly sooty shearwaters, which cover distances in excess of 14,000 km (8,700 mi) from their breeding colonies on the Falkland Islands (52°S 60°W) to as far as 70° north latitude in the North Atlantic Ocean off northern Norway, and around New Zealand to as far as 60° north latitude in the North Pacific Ocean off Alaska.
Muttonbirding is the seasonal harvesting of the chicks of petrels, especially shearwater species, for food, oil and feathers by recreational or commercial hunters. Such hunting of petrels and other seabirds has occurred in various locations since prehistoric times, and there is evidence that many island populations have become extinct as a result.
The large chicks of the Manx shearwater are very rich in oil from their fish diet and have been eaten since prehistoric times. They are easily extricated from their burrows, and the annual crop from the Calf of Man may have been as high as 10,000 birds per year in the 17th century.
Puffinus gravis, great shearwater breeds on islands in the South Atlantic Ocean; ranges in the North Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic Circle; Puffinus pacificus, wedge-tailed shearwater ranges through tropical Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean; Puffinus bulleri, Buller's shearwater breeds on islands off the coast of New Zealand; ranges across the ...
Translocation of chicks to establish new breeding colonies is also part of long-term strategy to restore the environment, including offshore islands that were once farmed but are now protected areas. Between 1991 and 1996, 334 fluttering shearwater chicks were moved from Long Island in the Marlborough Sounds to Maud Island. Artificial burrows ...
A Laysan albatross feeds its chick. The parent pumps food from a modified foregut, the proventriculus, and the chick catches the meal in its lower mandible. Upon hatching, the chicks are semi-precocial, having open eyes, a dense covering of white or grey down feathers, and the ability to move around the nesting site. After hatching, the ...
The white-chinned petrel (Procellaria aequinoctialis) also known as the Cape hen and shoemaker, is a large shearwater in the family Procellariidae.It ranges around the Southern Ocean as far north as southern Australia, Peru and Namibia, and breeds colonially on scattered islands.
The sooty shearwater was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin under the binomial name Procellaria grisea. [2] The shearwater had been briefly described in 1777 by James Cook in the account of his second voyage to the Pacific, but without a valid scientific name; [3] and also in 1785 the English ornithologist John Latham had described a museum specimen ...