Sooty Shearwater

How to identify

Field marks

1. Plumage dark, blackish in poor light and chocolate-brown in bright light
2. A single silvery stripe through center of underwing
3. Wings held stiff in flight, with little flapping
4. Wingtips almost skim the water

Voice

Gives loud cooing and croaking calls at night at breeding grounds; usually silent at sea.

Similar species

Short-tailed Shearwater

In the Pacific region, the two are almost indistinguishable at a distance.

Where and when it's recorded

Sooty Shearwater has been recorded at 324 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 53 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

Where it's recorded most

1. Southeast Farallon IslandUnited States10,601 records
2. Pt. Pinos – seawatch onlyUnited States3,886 records
3. Kaikoura – offshore – Albatross Encounter pelagicNew Zealand2,173 records

Countries and regions with the most records

United StatesNew ZealandChileAustraliaSpainUnited KingdomFalkland IslandsIreland

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The sooty shearwater (Ardenna grisea) is a medium-large shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. In New Zealand, it is also known by its Māori name tītī, and is harvested by Māori people for muttonbird, like its relatives the wedge-tailed shearwater (A. pacificus) and the Australian short-tailed shearwater (A. tenuirostris).

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

Questions