Tubenoses | Procellariiformes

Families in this order

• Albatrosses | Diomedeidae5 speciesJust over twenty species in four genera, centred on the oceans around Antarctica. This guide covers five, in two genera. The Waved Albatross (Phoebastria irrorata) is the only albatross that breeds in the tropics: almost the entire world population nests on Española in the Galápagos, with a small number on Isla de la Plata off the coast of Ecuador, and outside the breeding season it forages in the cold, productive waters of the Humboldt Current off Ecuador and Peru. The four species of the genus Thalassarche breed on islands in the southern oceans and come to those same waters as non-breeding visitors. The wings are long and narrow, and a tendon in the shoulder joint locks them open without muscular effort, so albatrosses glide over the waves for hours without a wingbeat and cover thousands of kilometres on a single foraging trip. They have two tubular nostrils on either side of the bill, an excellent sense of smell and glands above the eyes that excrete excess salt. They eat mainly squid, fish, crustaceans and carrion from the surface, often at night. Pairs stay together for life and greet each other with dances full of bill-clattering and calls to the sky. A single egg is laid on the ground in a colony, and the birds can live for several decades. Drowning as bycatch in fisheries is the greatest threat, for the Waved Albatross too off the coast of Peru.
• Southern storm petrels | Oceanitidae4 speciesAmong the smallest seabirds in the guide, with strikingly long, slender legs that project beyond the tail in flight and fairly short, rounded wings. They feed right at the surface, wings held up and feet pattering or hopping on the water, picking plankton and oily scraps from the top layer. Elliot's Storm Petrel is a common bird of the cold Humboldt Current along the west coast and around the Galápagos. They nest colonially in burrows and rock crevices on islands and come in only after dark, so nothing of them is to be seen there by day.
• Northern storm petrels | Hydrobatidae7 speciesJust as small, but with longer, narrower and more sharply pointed wings and short legs that do not reach past the tail, giving an erratic, bat-like flight in which beats and glides alternate. They take food while hovering or in passing rather than pattering steadily on the surface. This guide covers seven species of the genus Hydrobates, mainly over the Humboldt Current and around the Galápagos; some species breed in cavities in the salt crusts of the coastal desert, far from the sea. At night, from the nest chamber and over the colony, they give churring and chattering series of notes; the birds themselves smell strongly musky, and the scent lingers about the nest.
• Petrels, shearwaters and diving petrels | Procellariidae22 speciesTwenty-two species in nine genera occur in this guide, mainly over the cold, productive water of the Humboldt Current and around the Galápagos. Medium-sized to large seabirds with a stout hooked bill and long, narrow wings held stiff and straight in the glide: they shear low over the waves and use the difference in wind speed just above the water to make headway without a wingbeat. Food is snatched from the surface or chased underwater, several species diving tens of metres with half-folded wings; the small diving petrels whirr low over the sea and row with their wings underwater. The legs are set far back, so on land they shuffle and push along on the breast; nesting is in self-dug burrows or rock crevices on islands, for the Galápagos Petrel in the humid highlands of the islands and for the Peruvian Diving Petrel in the guano layer of coastal islands. The chick is stuffed with oil-rich food until it outweighs its parents, and is then left to itself.