Great Shearwater - a photo on Flickriver

Great Shearwater

            I think that Great Shearwater was my final one of the regularly occurring bird species that I managed to see in Britain (back in 1990).  Though it is very rare in Britain away from the Southwest, and even there it only occurs in late summer/early autumn after strong westerly gales.  Most bird migration is generally in a north-south direction with northern breeding birds moving south for winter to escape the cold or lack of insects.  But only a handful of seabirds undertake the opposite migration from southern breeding grounds to the north.  Great Shearwater is one such species which breeds  in the austral summer (ie our winter) in places like Gough, Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands and Tristan de Cunha in the South Atlantic.  They search for fish and squid during the day and bring them back to their nesting burrows at night to avoid being mugged by gulls.  Then after breeding they migrate to the North Atlantic where they are seen from late summer every year off the coasts of Britain, though rarely in large numbers.  I photographed this one at sea east of the Falkland Islands showing its distinctive black cap and white half-collar, white horseshoe rump and pale-edged brown upperparts.  I'm not really sure why but this is one of my favourite seabirds and I still get excited when I see one.
   

Taken on: January 23, 2019

Tags:

Puffinus

gravis

Shearwater

South

Atlantic

Falkland

Islands

Tim Melling

Ardenna « less

Sets appears in: • Antarctica, South Georgia and Falkland Islands 2019

Stats: 6,950 views / 16 comments

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