LONG‐DISTANCE VAGRANCY IN THE PETRELS

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Summary: The records of long‐distance vagrancy in the Procellariiformes are listed and re‐examined. Some are clearly valid, more are obviously doubtful, many are difficult to confirm. Some records from the last century have failed to be repeated in this, but others have been repeated, sometimes more frequently. Some of them suggest hitherto unrecognized migrations or post‐juvenile or post‐breeding dispersal. Otherwise in general it appears that the more migratory albatrosses and much less often perhaps the southern fulmars may cross the equator into the opposite hemisphere, shearwaters and storm‐petrels may go astray on migration into the wrong ocean, and the gadfly petrels of the genus Pterodroma, though rarely recorded anywhere near land away from the breeding stations, are occasionally capable of prodigious feats of wandering across several oceans and continents. These last records are hard to explain, though some at least must be genuine; the best explanation appears to be that the birds are first displaced from their range by storms, and then have vast powers of endurance so that they are able to wander even further afield in attempting to return to it. They then often come to grief in circumstances where it may be very hard indeed to prove the manner of the appearance beyond all reasonable doubt, and there will always be a large element of uncertainty about many older records, including a number on current national lists, although many cannot be ignored entirely.