All species › Tubenoses › Petrels, shearwaters and diving petrels › Flesh-footed Shearwater
Flesh-footed Shearwater | Ardenna carneipes
Australische grote pijlstormvogel | Pardela paticlara
Flesh-footed Shearwater is a heavy, entirely dark shearwater with pale legs that turns up in small numbers off the California coast in late summer and autumn. It breeds on islands off Australia, New Zealand and in the Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometres outside the area covered by this guide, and is seen here only as a non-breeding wanderer.
Voice
At sea, the only setting in which this species occurs within the area covered by this guide, it is essentially silent. At the breeding colony, far beyond the reach of this guide, it gives a series of wailing and groaning calls from the burrow at night, but none of that reaches the coast of North America.
Recording: Barry Edmonston — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Taiharuru, Northland, New Zealand · xeno-canto
Identification
A large, heavy shearwater, entirely dark brown to black, with a pale, flesh-pink bill tipped black and pale, flesh-coloured legs and feet. The wings are long and relatively broad, the tail long and pointed, and the flight heavier and stiffer-winged than that of most other shearwaters off the American west coast. There is no distinct juvenile plumage: young birds resemble the adult.
Confusion species
Sooty Shearwater is equally dark but has dark legs and a dark bill, and shows a silvery flash under the wing in flight that this species lacks. Pink-footed Shearwater, its closest relative, has a pale belly; confusion arises mainly with dark young Pink-footed Shearwaters, which nonetheless always stay somewhat paler on the underparts. The flesh-coloured legs are the best mark at any age.
Habitat
Within the area covered by this guide the species occurs only on the open ocean, usually beyond the edge of the continental shelf and further out to sea, never close inshore or on land. It snatches squid, fish and crustaceans from the surface or dives briefly for them, and regularly follows shrimp trawlers and other fishing vessels. Breeding colonies lie on vegetated, often forested islands, far outside the area covered by this guide.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by the USNVC — the vegetation classification of the United States and Canada — and CMECS for sea and coast.
Range and movements
The species breeds on islands off southwestern and southern Australia, Lord Howe Island, northern New Zealand, and Saint Paul Island in the southern Indian Ocean. Non-breeding birds move into the Pacific Ocean during the northern summer and autumn, when small, annually returning numbers are seen off California; further north, off Oregon, Washington and in the Gulf of Alaska, the species is far scarcer and less regular.
Where and when to look
Look for it on a pelagic boat trip out of Monterey Bay or other California ports between August and November, among flocks of the far more numerous Sooty and Pink-footed Shearwaters; the flesh-coloured legs and the pale, black-tipped bill are the first things to notice.
Conservation
The species is listed as Near Threatened (NT), with a globally declining trend driven by bycatch in longline fisheries, disturbance and predation by introduced animals on the breeding islands, and plastic ingestion, which also harms condition through accumulated heavy metals.
Scientific name
Ardenna carneipes | (Gould, 1844)
British ornithologist John Gould described the species in 1844 as Puffinus carneipes; it has since been placed in the genus Ardenna, hence the parentheses around author and year. The species name carneipes is built from Latin caro, carnis ('flesh') and pes ('foot'), referring to the flesh-coloured legs. The genus Ardenna was introduced in 1853 by Reichenbach, who took the name from Artenna, a term the Italian naturalist Aldrovandi used for a seabird in 1603. The type locality lies on small islands off Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia.