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Northern Fulmar | Fulmarus glacialis
Noordse stormvogel | Fulmar boreal
A stocky, gull-like petrel of the cold North Atlantic, gliding low over the waves on stiff wings. In the region it is an exceptional vagrant: only a couple of records are known from Morocco, and none from the rest of the area.
Voice
Silent at sea. At colonies and when squabbling over food a cackling, grunting ag-ag-ag-arrr.
Recording: Roland Arnison — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
Bull-necked, with a rounded head and a short, thick yellow bill with prominent tube nostrils. The pale morph, almost the only one in the Atlantic, has the head, neck and underparts white, the mantle and upperwing silvery grey and the rump and tail slightly paler grey; the primaries show a faint pale patch above. A dark smudge in front of the eye gives a ‘frowning’ look. The rare dark morph is all smoky grey. Flies with short bursts of stiff, rapid beats and long glides on straight wings, in high arcs in strong wind.
Confusion species
At first sight a gull, but gulls have narrower, angled wings with black tips, a slender bill without tubes and a more supple flight. Scopoli’s Shearwater (Calonectris diomedea) and Cory’s Shearwater (Calonectris borealis) are browner above, with longer, narrower wings and a slimmer pale yellow bill, and beat their wings more slowly. A dark fulmar can recall Sooty Shearwater (Ardenna grisea) at distance, but that species has a slim black bill and silvery underwings.
Habitat
Open sea, especially cool water over and beyond the continental shelf; follows fishing boats. In the region only as a stray along the coast, sometimes washed up dead.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
In the region recorded only in Morocco, where the Moroccan Rare Birds Committee accepted just the second record in 2011: a dead bird at Moulay Bousselham in January 1985 and an adult at Aglou (Souss) in April 2011. There are no certain records from the Mediterranean or the rest of the region. Beyond it, it breeds around the northern Atlantic and Pacific, from Brittany, the British Isles, Iceland and Norway to Greenland, Svalbard, Canada, Alaska and north-east Siberia; outside the breeding season it ranges south in the Atlantic to the Bay of Biscay, rarely further.
How and when to look
The best, though still slim, chance is seawatching on Morocco’s northern Atlantic coast in winter after severe north-westerly gales. On any grey-and-white ‘gull’ shearing low over the water on stiff wings, check for the thick yellow bill.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened, although numbers have fallen in parts of Europe through plastic ingestion, bycatch and changes in food supply. In the region an exceptional vagrant of no conservation significance.
Scientific name
Fulmarus glacialis | (Linnaeus, 1761)
Linnaeus described the species in 1761 as Procellaria glacialis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Fulmarus was introduced in 1826 by Stephens. Fulmarus goes back to Old Norse fúlmár 'foul gull', after the birds' habit of ejecting a foul-smelling oil. glacialis is Latin for 'icy', after the cold northern seas where the bird breeds. The specimen the first description was based on came from north of the Arctic Circle.