Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Behaviors
- Flying
Media notes
Dark-rumped Leach's (Chapman's) Storm-Petrel photographed by Curtis A. Marantz on 24 August 2024 flying over our oil slick at the north end of Crespi Knoll, about 37½ kilometers southwest of San Mateo Point (33° 08' 17.6" N, 117° 51' 55.1" W), Orange County, California.
Observation details
We saw during our time over Crespi Knoll three, dark-rumped Leach's Storm-Petrels, with at least two seen over our slick at one point. These birds stood out as conspicuously smaller than the Black Storm-Petrels with which they were associated, at maybe two-thirds the size of the larger birds, but they also flew with a somewhat more erratic or bounding flight than an Ashy Storm-Petrel, and in this regard, their flight seemed intermediate between that of a Black Storm-Petrel and an Ashy Storm-Petrel. Their overall structure was typical of a storm petrel, given a small bill that was rather slim, a large head with a bulbous appearance, a plump body, moderately long wings that tapered to pointed tips, and what I thought was a somewhat shorter tail than I would associate with an Ashy Storm-Petrel. Also more like the Black Storm-Petrels, these birds appeared more blackish and less obviously gray than an Ashy Storm-Petrel, though also not truly black. They had paler carpal-bars crossing the middle part of wing diagonally across the upperwing coverts. Unlike a single bird that we saw briefly quite close to the boat during this period, the three birds that we identified as this taxon had the standard pattern on the rump of a dark-rumped Leach's Storm-Petrel, given a mostly dark rump with obvious patches of whitish on either side that looked like headlights.
Technical information
- Model
- ILCE-7RM5
- Lens
- FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS
- ISO
- 500
- Focal length
- 600 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/6.3
- Shutter speed
- 1/1600 sec
- Dimensions
- 1093 pixels x 703 pixels
- Original file size
- 1.33 MB