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Sargasso Shearwater | Puffinus lherminieri
Sargassopijlstormvogel | Pardela de Sargazo
The Sargasso Shearwater is the only shearwater that breeds in the Caribbean. It was long included in Audubon's Shearwater, a species group now split into several species. The name refers to the Sargasso Sea, where many birds feed outside the breeding season. In the region it can be seen year-round, most often near the breeding islets.
Voice
Silent at sea. At the colony, twittering and mewing calls at night, both in flight and from the nest cavities.
Recording: William Mackin — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
29–31 cm. A small, compact black-and-white shearwater with short, broad wings and a relatively long tail. Upperparts, head to below the eye and tail blackish-brown; underparts and underwing white with a broad dark border. The undertail coverts are dark, often the best feature. Bill slender and dark, legs pink. It flies low over the water with bursts of quick, fluttering beats and short glides; in strong wind it glides more. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus is larger, with longer, narrower wings, white undertail coverts, a white crescent behind the ear coverts and a calmer flight with longer glides. Barolo Shearwater Puffinus baroli of Macaronesia, recorded in the region only as a very rare vagrant, has more white on the face and white undertail coverts. The larger Black-capped Petrel Pterodroma hasitata has a white forehead, a white rump and a high, swinging flight.
Habitat
Open sea and coastal waters, including deep water close to the islands; it often feeds around floating sargassum and with terns over shoals of predatory fish. It eats small fish, squid and crustaceans, picked from the surface or caught in short dives. It breeds in rock crevices, cavities and burrows on small, mostly uninhabited islets, cays and steep coasts, visiting the colonies only at night. It lays a single white egg.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Breeds in the Bahamas, which hold most of the population, and also in the Turks and Caicos Islands, locally on islets around the Greater Antilles, in the Virgin Islands, scattered through the Lesser Antilles and on Tobago. At sea in the waters of almost the whole region. Outside the breeding season many birds stay nearby, while others move to the Gulf Stream off the eastern United States and to the Sargasso Sea.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
By day often seen from inter-island ferries and headlands, most often in the breeding season near colonies; in the evening and at night the calls can be heard over the breeding islets. Colonies are vulnerable and are best not entered.
Conservation status
Not threatened according to the IUCN. In the Caribbean many colonies are small or have disappeared. Introduced rats, cats and mongooses, the taking of eggs and chicks, disturbance and development of breeding islets are the main threats; at sea oil and plastic pollution play a part.
Scientific name
Puffinus lherminieri | Lesson, 1839
Lesson described the species in 1839 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Puffinus was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Puffinus comes from English puffin and its variants, the name for the cured nestling of the shearwater, once a delicacy. lherminieri honours the French naturalist Félix Louis L'Herminier (1779–1833), who worked on Guadeloupe and collected birds there. The specimen the first description was based on came from Antilles (Saint Barthélemy, Guadeloupe).