Swinhoe' Storm-petrel

About the Swinhoe' Storm-petrel

Swinhoe's storm petrel or Swinhoe's petrel (Hydrobates monorhis) is a small, all-brown seabird of the storm petrel family Hydrobatidae. The scientific name is derived from Ancient Greek. Hydrobates is from hydro 'water', and bates 'walker', and monorhis is from monos 'single' and rhinos 'nostril'. The common name commemorates the British naturalist Robert Swinhoe, who first described the species in 1867.

It was formerly defined in the genus Oceanodroma before that genus was synonymized with Hydrobates. It breeds on islands in the northwest Pacific off the Russian Far East, China, Japan and Korea. It nests in colonies close to the sea in rock crevices and lays a single white egg. It spends the rest of the year at sea, ranging into the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea.

It breeds on Verkhovsky Island (7,500 pairs), south of Vladivostok, Russia, and Japan (a minimum of 1,000 pairs). There are little-known populations in China, Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, and records suggest that breeding may also occur in the North Atlantic. In winter, it migrates south and west to the northern Indian Ocean (Brooke 2004). Sato et al. (2010) also estimate the world... Wikipedia →