ML623312290

Age and sex

Unknown age, Unknown sex - 1

Behaviors

Flying

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

Canon EOS R7

Lens

RF100-500mm F4.5-7.1 L IS USM

ISO

1600

Focal length

363 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/8.0

Shutter speed

1/2000 sec

Dimensions

988 pixels x 696 pixels

Original file size

519.97 KB