Did you know that possibly the most abundant bird in the world is in Maine now?\u00a0 And that the vast majority of Mainers have never seen one?\u00a0 The bird is Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrel, a small seabird that is regularly seen from whale watches and fishing expeditions.\u00a0 Occasionally these birds may be seen from shore when onshore winds push them landward.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels belong to the order of birds called the tubenoses.\u00a0 This order includes three families: the\u00a0 large albatrosses, shearwaters and gadfly petrels, and the storm-petrels.\u00a0 The cylindrical external nostrils on the bill give these birds their order name.\u00a0 Spending most of their lives at sea with no ready source of freshwater, tube-noses have special glands in the nose that secrete salt .\u00a0 The salt is dribbled out through the tubes onto the surface of the bill.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels do not breed in the northern hemisphere.\u00a0 Rather, they are now spending their winter on the offshore waters of the western Atlantic.\u00a0 These birds are small, about the size of a swallow (seven inches in length).\u00a0\u00a0 They may be identified by the short, squared tail and the the relatively long legs that cause the feet to extend beyond the tip of the tail\u00a0 They have yellowish-green webbing between the toes (good luck seeing that field mark from a bouncing boat!).\u00a0 Perhaps the best identification feature is the broad, U-shaped white band on the rump that extends underneath to the undertail coverts; the white rump is easily seen against the rest of the brown feathers on the body.\u00a0 From above, these birds have a pale bar on the upper surface of the wings.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels fly close to water surface with purposeful, shallow wing beats similar to those of a swallow or small tern.\u00a0 Flight is direct with steady shallow wing beats.<\/p>\n
Like most storm-petrels, Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels feed on the small, drifting organsims called plankton.\u00a0 These include larval fish, various crustaceans including krill, and jellyfish.<\/p>\n
Most storm-petrels, including Wilson\u2019s, use a fascinating pattering behavior to help them feed.\u00a0 A storm-petrel will hover over the sea and dip its feet into the surface of the ocean three of four times.\u00a0 This dipping seems to attract larval fish and crustaceans, which then become lunch for the storm-petrel.<\/p>\n
Some authors have described this pattering as walking on the water.\u00a0 In fact the name petrel is an allusion to the biblical account of St. Peter walking on the water.\u00a0 The storm part of the name comes from the observation that these birds are generally seen by landlubbers only after major storms.<\/p>\n
In the Caribbean, Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels are called skipjacks.\u00a0 Newfoundland fishermen call them Mother Carey\u2019s Chickens, a corruption of Mater Cara (Dear Mother), a reference to the Virgin Mary.<\/p>\n
Like other tubenoses, Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels have a good sense of smell.\u00a0 It\u2019s great fun on a pelagic bird trip when the captain spreads a little cod liver oil on the surface of the ocean.\u00a0 Within a short while, tube-noses of various sorts find their way to the slick.<\/p>\n
Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels will follow fishing boats, attracted no doubt by the fishy odors emanating from the boat.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s not unusual to see 50 or more around a boat.<\/p>\n
In their breeding season (our winter), Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels breed near high-density plankton areas around the ice in far south and turbulent seas in the subantartic zone off South America.\u00a0 They seem to breed on virtually every suitable exposed rocky area off the coast of Antarctica as well.<\/p>\n
A single egg is laid in a burrow and both members of the pair incubate and feed the chick once it has hatched.\u00a0 It takes 40-50 days for the egg to hatch.<\/p>\n
Descriptions of their numbers in the southern seas are mind-boggling.\u00a0 Some observers have observed acres of Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels off the coast of South Georgia so dense that the birds seem to be touching each other.\u00a0 Flocks of thousands or tens of thousands of bird are often reported.<\/p>\n
Audubon mentioned Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels as breeding on islands off Nova Scotia and other writers extended this claim to include Maine.\u00a0 The error persisted for many years until finally corrected by Brewster in 1884.\u00a0 Audubon was undoubtedly observing Leach\u2019s Storm-Petrel, a similar species that nests from Maine northward.\u00a0 These birds tend to forage at night so are rarely seen during the day.<\/p>\n
After the brief breeding season in the subantarctic waters, Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrels make their way north to more equitable climates to spend most of the year.\u00a0 They arrive in the Gulf of Maine by early June and mostly depart by the middle of September.<\/p>\n
[Originally published on September 4, 2011]<\/p>\n\n
Did you know that possibly the most abundant bird in the world is in Maine now?\u00a0 And that the vast majority of Mainers have never seen one?\u00a0 The bird is Wilson\u2019s Storm-Petrel, a small seabird that is regularly seen from whale watches and fishing expeditions.\u00a0 Occasionally these birds may be seen from shore when onshore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[420,1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}