Tubenoses | Procellariiformes

Stormvogelachtigen | Petreles y pardelas

Tubenoses: the nostrils open in horny tubes on or beside the bill, and the bill itself is built up of separate horny plates ending in a hook. Their sense of smell is unusually good for birds and lets them find food far downwind; a salt gland above each eye drains surplus sea salt out through the bill. In the forestomach they make an oily concentrate that serves both as food for the chick and as a defence against intruders. They come ashore only to breed, lay a single egg that is not replaced if lost, and do not breed for the first time until they are several years old.

Families in this order

Albatrosses | Diomedeidae2 speciesJust over twenty species in four genera, centred on the oceans around Antarctica, with a few species in the North Pacific. Only the latter are seen in this region: the Laysan Albatross and the Black-footed Albatross, both of the genus Phoebastria and both mainly far off the Pacific coast of Mexico. The Laysan Albatross has established itself as a breeding bird in recent decades on Isla Guadalupe and a few other Mexican islands in the Pacific; the Black-footed Albatross is a scarce visitor on the open sea here. 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 eggs, fish 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 more than sixty years. Drowning as bycatch in longline fisheries is the greatest threat.
Southern storm petrels | Oceanitidae1 speciesSmall seabirds that breed in the Southern Hemisphere. Compared with the northern storm petrels they have shorter, rounded wings and relatively long legs that project beyond the tail in flight. They flutter low over the water and appear to walk on the surface with their feet while picking up plankton and small fish. After breeding many species cross the equator and spend the northern summer on the open sea of the Northern Hemisphere.
Northern storm petrels | Hydrobatidae9 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. 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 | Procellariidae13 speciesMedium-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 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. The chick is stuffed with oil-rich food until it outweighs its parents, and is then left to itself.