Storm petrel or stormy petrel may refer to one of two bird families, both in the order Procellariiformes, once treated as the same family.
Up and down!—up and down!
From the base of the wave to the billow's crown,
And amidst the flashing and feathery foam
The stormy petrel finds a home,—
A home, if such a place may be
For her who lives on the wide, wide sea.
O’er the deep!—o'er the deep!
Where the whale and the shark and the sword-fish sleep,—
Outflying the blast and the driving rain,
The petrel telleth her tale—in vain!
From "The Stormy Petrel", a poem by Barry Cornwall [1]
The two families are:
Common name | Scientific name | Status |
---|---|---|
European storm petrel | Hydrobates pelagicus | LC |
Fork-tailed storm petrel | Hydrobates furcatus | LC |
Ringed storm petrel | Hydrobates hornbyi | NT |
Leach's storm petrel | Hydrobates leucorhous | LC |
Townsend's storm petrel | Hydrobates socorroensis | EN |
Ainley's storm petrel | Hydrobates cheimomnestes | VU |
Swinhoe's storm petrel | Hydrobates monorhis | NT |
Ashy storm petrel | Hydrobates homochroa | EN |
Band-rumped storm petrel | Hydrobates castro | LC |
Monteiro's storm petrel | Hydrobates monteiroi | VU |
Cape Verde storm petrel | Hydrobates jabejabe | LC |
Wedge-rumped storm petrel | Hydrobates tethys | LC |
Black storm petrel | Hydrobates melania | LC |
Guadalupe storm petrel | Hydrobates macrodactylus | CR (Probably Extinct) |
Markham's storm petrel | Hydrobates markhami | NT |
Matsudaira's storm petrel | Hydrobates matsudairae | VU |
Tristram's storm petrel | Hydrobates tristrami | LC |
Least storm petrel | Hydrobates microsoma | LC |
Common name | Scientific name | Status |
---|---|---|
Wilson's storm petrel | Oceanites oceanicus | LC |
Pincoya storm petrel | Oceanites pincoyae | DD |
Elliot's storm petrel | Oceanites gracilis | DD |
Grey-backed storm petrel | Garrodia nereis | LC |
White-faced storm petrel | Pelagodroma marina | LC |
White-bellied storm petrel | Fregetta grallaria | LC |
New Zealand storm petrel | Fregetta maoriana | CR |
Black-bellied storm petrel or Gould's storm petrel | Fregetta tropica | LC |
Polynesian storm petrel (including white-throated storm petrel) | Nesofregetta fuliginosa | EN |
The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar System as Earth's North Pole.
Procellariiformes is an order of seabirds that comprises four families: the albatrosses, the petrels and shearwaters, and two families of storm petrels. Formerly called Tubinares and still called tubenoses in English, procellariiforms are often referred to collectively as the petrels, a term that has been applied to all members of the order, or more commonly all the families except the albatrosses. They are almost exclusively pelagic, and have a cosmopolitan distribution across the world's oceans, with the highest diversity being around New Zealand.
Bryan Waller Procter was an English poet who served as a Commissioner in Lunacy.
Northern storm petrels are seabirds in the genus Hydrobates in the family Hydrobatidae, part of the order Procellariiformes. The family was once lumped with the similar austral storm petrels in the combined storm petrels, but have been split, as they were not closely related. These smallest of seabirds feed on planktonic crustaceans and small fish picked from the surface, typically while hovering. Their flight is fluttering and sometimes bat-like.
Petrels are tube-nosed seabirds in the phylogenetic order Procellariiformes.
The family Procellariidae is a group of seabirds that comprises the fulmarine petrels, the gadfly petrels, the diving petrels, the prions, and the shearwaters. This family is part of the bird order Procellariiformes, which also includes the albatrosses and the storm petrels.
The European storm petrel, also known as British storm petrel, or just storm petrel, is a species of seabird in the northern storm petrel family, Hydrobatidae. The small, square-tailed bird is entirely black except for a broad, white rump and a white band on the under wings, and it has a fluttering, bat-like flight. The large majority of the population breeds on islands off the northern coasts of Europe, with the greatest numbers in the Faroe Islands, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Iceland. The Mediterranean population is a separate subspecies whose strongholds are Filfla Island (Malta), Sicily, and the Balearic Islands. This subspecies is indiscernible at sea from its Atlantic relatives.
The northern fulmar, fulmar, or Arctic fulmar is an abundant seabird found primarily in subarctic regions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans. There has been one confirmed sighting in the Southern Hemisphere, with a single bird seen south of New Zealand. Fulmars come in one of two colour morphs; a light one in temperate populations, with white head and body and grey wings and tail, and a dark one in arctic populations, which is uniformly grey; intermediate birds are common. Though similar in appearance to gulls, fulmars are in fact members of the family Procellariidae, which includes petrels and shearwaters.
The Drake Passage is the body of water between South America's Cape Horn, Chile, Argentina, and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean. The passage is named after the 16th-century English explorer and privateer Sir Francis Drake.
Wilson's storm petrel, also known as Wilson's petrel, is a small seabird of the austral storm petrel family Oceanitidae. It is one of the most abundant bird species in the world and has a circumpolar distribution mainly in the seas of the southern hemisphere but extending northwards during the summer of the northern hemisphere. The world population was estimated in 2022 as stable at 8 to 20 million birds. In 2010 it had been estimated at 12-30 million. A 1998 book had estimated more than 50 million pairs. The name commemorates the Scottish-American ornithologist Alexander Wilson. The genus name Oceanites refers to the mythical Oceanids, the three thousand daughters of Tethys. The species name is from Latin oceanus, "ocean".
The white-faced storm petrel, also known as white-faced petrel or frigate petrel is a small seabird of the austral storm petrel family Oceanitidae. It is the only member of the monotypic genus Pelagodroma. It is widely distributed across the northern and southern hemisphere, especially around the coastal and open ocean waters of southern Australia, New Zealand, Tristan da Cunha, Cabo Verde, the Canary islands and the Selvagens islands.
The black-footed albatross is a large seabird of the albatross family Diomedeidae from the North Pacific. All but 2.5% of the population is found among the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It is one of three species of albatross that range in the northern hemisphere, nesting on isolated tropical islands. Unlike many albatrosses, it is dark plumaged.
"The Song of the Stormy Petrel" is a short piece of revolutionary literature written by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky in 1901. The poem is written in a variation of unrhymed trochaic tetrameter with occasional Pyrrhic substitutions.
East Antarctica, also called Greater Antarctica, constitutes the majority (two-thirds) of the Antarctic continent, lying primarily in the Eastern Hemisphere south of the Indian Ocean, and separated from West Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains. It is generally greater in elevation than West Antarctica, and includes the Gamburtsev Mountain Range in the center. The geographic South Pole is located within East Antarctica.
Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds related to the procellariids, storm petrels, and diving petrels in the order Procellariiformes. They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific. They are absent from the North Atlantic, although fossil remains of short-tailed albatross show they once lived there up to the Pleistocene, and occasional vagrants are found. Great albatrosses are among the largest of flying birds, with wingspans reaching up to 2.5–3.5 metres (8.2–11.5 ft) and bodies over 1 metre (3.3 ft) in length. The albatrosses are usually regarded as falling into four genera, but disagreement exists over the number of species.
Markham's storm petrel is a seabird native to the Pacific Ocean around Peru, Chile, and Ecuador. The species is named after British explorer Albert Hastings Markham, who collected the specimen on which the scientific description was based. It is a large and slender storm petrel, with a wingspan between 49 and 54 cm. Its plumage is black to sooty brown with a grayish bar that runs diagonally across the upper side of the wings. A member of the family Hydrobatidae, the northern storm petrels, the species is similar to the black storm petrel, from which it can be hard to distinguish.
Austral storm petrels, or southern storm petrels, are seabirds in the family Oceanitidae, part of the order Procellariiformes. These smallest of seabirds feed on planktonic crustaceans and small fish picked from the surface, typically while hovering. Their flight is fluttering and sometimes bat-like.
Stormy petrel is an alternate term for Storm petrel, the name for two families of petrels