Fork-tailed Storm Petrel

About the Fork-tailed Storm Petrel

The fork-tailed storm petrel (Hydrobates furcatus) is a small seabird of the storm petrel family Hydrobatidae. It is the second-most abundant and widespread storm petrel (after Leach's storm petrel) and is the only bird in its family that is bluish-grey in colour.

The fork-tailed storm petrel is pelagic, spending up to 8 months in the northern Pacific Ocean. They only return to land to breed, where they nest in a single colony. Their nests can be found in a rock crevice or small burrow, where a single egg is laid. Their breeding range is along the coast of the northern Pacific Ocean, extending from northern California to northeast Asia.

They mainly feed on planktonic crustaceans, small fish, and squid, but also consume offal. Similarly to other storm petrels, they forage by picking food off the surface of the water while in flight. The fork-tailed storm petrel was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the petrels in the genus Procellaria and coined the binomial name Procellaria furcata. Gmelin based his description on the "fork-tailed petrel... Wikipedia →