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To the Beauty of Birds

Shearwater’s are medium sized sea-birds. They shear or skim on the surface of the water. The two most common shearwaters seen on our pelagic trips were Buller’s Shearwater and Pink-footed Shearwater. Fortunately they are easy to distinguish.

The Buller’ s Shearwater Puffinus bulleri has a white throat, breast and abdomen (3860, 3566, 3453). The dark nape of the neck does not impinge on the white throat (3453). Seen from the underside the bottom of the wings are white with a dark rim extending entirely around the wing (3647). Seen from the top beginning at the wing tips, there is a brown-white-brown-white pattern (3365, 3929). The bill is curved downward and black at the tip (3860).

The Pink-footed Shearwater Puffinus creatopus (see that page) also has a white breast and abdomen but the dark brown of the nape of the neck extends around covering most of the throat (3771, 3775, 3996, 3711 and on the Pink-footed Shearwater page). Up close (4147) the typical tubular upper bill of the “tubenoses” can be seen. The under portions of the wings are also white as in Buller’s Shearwater, but much less so and with a broader dark ring around the white part {3771, 3711, 3996 and others). Without sunlight shinning on them the pinkness of feet are difficult to see. This was visible in figure 4042. The tendency to “shear” the water is well shown in figure 3774 where the right wing tip is just touching the water. In flight the tail can be cigar shaped (4259), to slightly spread (3847) to widely splayed (3669). The pelagic trip with the most Shearwater’s was the Monterey Pelagic Trip. The day before the trip, on a beach Forty-miles north of Monterey, we saw flights of hundreds of Pink-footed Shearwaters (2948). Not long ago they numbered in the thousands.

Buller's Shearwater