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Leach's Storm Petrel
Hydrobates leucorhous
Identify the Leach's Storm Petrel by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.
Leach's Storm Petrel is a small, dark tube-nosed seabird that spends most of its life far out in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, coming ashore only to breed on remote islands. It nests in burrows and crevices and visits its colonies strictly at night, often avoiding bright moonlight. It flies with a bounding, tern-like action and usually shows a white rump and a forked tail.
Did you know?
- Its telomeres appear to lengthen with age – an unusual pattern among animals.
- Its only Southern Hemisphere colony is on Dassen Island, South Africa.
Voice
About the species
Identification
A small, mostly dark seabird with a white rump that shows from afar; the wings are long and narrow, with a pale band on the upperwing, and the flight is light, bounding and erratic low over the waves. The tail is usually clearly forked. Its size, dark plumage and white rump, together with the bounding flight, help separate it from similar storm petrels.
Family
Hydrobatidae
Size
Small (sparrow)
Colours
black, white
About the habitat
Open ocean far from land; breeds on remote, predator-free islands in the cool North Atlantic and North Pacific, nesting in rock crevices, burrows or under logs.
Diet
Planktonic prey such as krill, copepods and amphipods, as well as lanternfish that rise to the surface at night; it may feed very far from its colony and sometimes swallows floating plastic.
Behaviour
Strictly oceanic away from the nest. It breeds in dense colonies in burrows or crevices, laying a single white egg, and visits the colony only at night to avoid gulls and skuas. It picks prey from the surface in erratic, bounding flight and rarely follows ships. It stores energy-rich oil in its stomach to feed chicks and to spit at predators.
Sources
Photo: Alexis Lours, CC BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leach's Storm-petrel Saint-Jean-de-Monts 01.jpg
Sound: Doug Hynes, XC748107, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/748107
Text: Wikipedia (English), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leach%27s_storm_petrel
