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Spectacled Petrel | Procellaria conspicillata
Brilstormvogel | Pardela de Anteojos
The Spectacled Petrel is a large blackish-brown petrel with a white 'spectacle' around the eyes that breeds at just one site in the world: the plateau of Inaccessible Island in the Tristan da Cunha group. After a deep low the population is growing again, and it is seen ever more often over the waters off the Cape.
Voice
Largely silent at sea; behind ships occasionally a rattling chatter like White-Chinned Petrel. At the colony at night rattling and moaning calls.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
50–56 cm, built like a White-Chinned Petrel: heavy, with long wings and a short, wedge-shaped tail. Wholly dark blackish-brown, with a white band running from the chin up along the cheeks, around the eye and closing in a narrow arc across the forecrown. The shape and extent of the white vary, but it almost always surrounds the eyes or the forecrown. The heavy bill is pale yellow to ivory with dark lines and a dark tip; the legs are black. Sexes alike. Flight as in White-Chinned Petrel, with slow wingbeats and long glides.
Confusion species
White-Chinned Petrel (Procellaria aequinoctialis) is almost identical in structure and colour, but the white is on the chin and throat, not around the eyes or on the forecrown; some White-Chinned Petrels have much white on the head, so check the shape and position of the markings. Flesh-Footed Shearwater Ardenna carneipes is slimmer, with a pink bill with a dark tip. Sooty Shearwater Ardenna grisea has a silvery underwing and a thin bill.
Habitat
Deep oceanic waters and the edge of the continental shelf in the subtropical South Atlantic, especially where warm and cold water meet. It takes squid, fish and crustaceans and follows fishing vessels and longlines. It breeds in burrows on a boggy plateau covered with ferns and grasses.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
In the region a scarce but regular visitor over deep water off the Western Cape, mainly beyond the shelf edge; rarer off Namibia and along the south coast. The entire world population breeds on Inaccessible Island (Tristan da Cunha). Outside the breeding season it disperses over the South Atlantic, most numerous off southern Brazil and Uruguay.
- Resident
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
The best chance is a deep-water trip from Cape Town to the trawling grounds beyond the shelf. Look closely at the head of every White-Chinned Petrel; a Spectacled Petrel often only stands out when it lands on the water behind the boat. Photographs of the head make the identification certain afterwards.
Conservation status
Vulnerable. The population was greatly reduced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by pigs on Inaccessible Island and has since their disappearance recovered to more than ten thousand pairs. Bycatch in longline fisheries off South America remains the main threat; because the species breeds on a single island, it is also vulnerable to disasters or the introduction of predators.
Scientific name
Procellaria conspicillata | Gould, 1844
Gould described the species in 1844 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Procellaria was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. Procellaria comes from the Latin procella, 'storm' — sailors associated petrels with stormy weather at sea. conspicillata is Latin for 'spectacled', from conspicillum, 'lookout' — for the white band around the face resembling spectacles. The specimen the first description was based on came from Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (not specified).