Manx shearwater
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The Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. Despite the scientific name, this species is completely unrelated to the puffins, which are auks, the only resemblance being that they are both burrow-nesting seabirds.
This species breeds in the North Atlantic, with major colonies on islands and coastal cliffs around Great Britain and Ireland. These birds have been nesting along the Atlantic coast of northeastern North America since about 1970. They nest in burrows which are only visited at night to avoid predation by large gulls. They form life-long monogamous pair-bonds.
This bird is 30-38 cm long, with a 76-89 cm wingspan. It has the typically "shearing" flight of the genus, dipping from side to side on stiff wings with few wingbeats, the wingtips almost touching the water. This bird looks like a flying cross, with its wing held at right angles to the body, and it changes from black to white as the black upperparts and white undersides are alternately exposed as it travels low over the sea.
This is a gregarious species, which can been seen in large numbers from boats or headlands, especially on passage in autumn. It is silent at sea, but at night the breeding colonies are alive with raucous cackling calls. The Manx Shearwater feeds on small fish (particularly herring, sprat and sardines), crustaceans, cephalopods and surface offal. The bird forages individually or in small flocks, and it makes use of feeding marine mammals and schools of predatory fish, which push prey species up to the surface. It does not follow boats.
They are extraordinarily long-lived. A Manx Shearwater breeding on Copeland Island, Northern Ireland, is currently (2003/2004) the oldest known wild bird in the world: ringed as an adult (at least 5 years old) in July 1953, it was retrapped in July 2003, at least 55 years old.
Manx Shearwaters migrate over 10,000 km to South America in winter, using waters off southern Brazil and Argentina, so this bird has covered a minimum of 1,000,000 km on migration alone (not counting day-to-day fishing trips). Another bird nearly as old, breeding on Bardsey Island off Wales was calculated by ornithologist Chris Mead to have flown over 8 million km (5 million miles) during its life (this bird was still alive in 2004, having outlived Mead).
The Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus and Yelkouan Shearwater Puffinus yelkouan were formerly considered to be races of this species, but each is now regarded as a full monotypic species.
External links
- for the Copeland bird ringed in 1953,
- for the Bardsey Island bird ringed in 1957,