Dave Lauten sent me these photographs of a storm-petrel taken by Andrew Martin, a friend of his currently aboard the R/V Melville at sea near Guam.
Andrew Martin writes, "I was fishing for dinner earlier, and a bunch of these little guys were hanging out. what kind of bird was it? my best guess is that it is 1 to 1.5 feet total wing span. it would hover just above the water with its feet gently touching down and kind of walking on water, and then it would pick things off the surface of the water to eat. then it would fly a bit and do the same thing".
The main candidates in this part of the world would be Swinhoe's, Matsudaira's and I suppose, Tristram's. The white bases to the primaries are quite obvious in all three images. At first glance, I am inclined to agree with Dave that these are probably Matsudaira's. The key points are the extent of the white primary bases, the whitish and broad carpal bar, steep forehead and relatively large bill.
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UPDATE (23 April 2008) There seems to be sweeping agreement that these are MATSUDAIRA'S STORM-PETREL (Oceanodroma matsudairae), an expected species in this part of the Pacific. Thanks to Gail Mackiernan, Jim Danzenbaker, Doug Pratt, Dave Lauten and Andrew Martin for their contributions.
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2 comments:
These are definitely Matsudaira's Storm Petrels, the species most likely off Guam.
Hi folks, here is some more info from Andrew:
we are about 10 miles northwest of apra harbor, guam. i have seem them a few times around the boat, one even crash landed on the deck. we put the bird in an open box (it appeared to have a broken leg or something, and it just sat there for several hours. one of my coworkers picked him up out of the box and he flew away.) we have some better pictures, but unfortunately, on a camera we dont have a download cable for until we get back
Cheers
Dave
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