Ardenna grisea
The Sooty Shearwater, *Ardenna grisea*, is a medium-sized pelagic seabird renowned for undertaking the longest annual animal migration known, covering an astonishing 64,000 kilometers in a figure-eight pattern. This streamlined avian voyager measures approximately 40-50 cm (16-20 inches) in length with a formidable wingspan of 95-110 cm (37-43 inches), sporting a sleek, dark sooty-brown plumage that can appear almost black at a distance. A key identification feature in flight is the contrasti...
Primarily an oceanic or pelagic species, spending almost its entire life at sea, only coming ashore to breed on remote, predator-free islands and coastal areas, typically in the Southern Hemisphere.
Their diet consists mainly of small schooling fish, squid, and crustaceans, particularly krill. They forage primarily by pursuit-diving deep underwater or by seizing prey from the surface.
Sooty Shearwaters are highly social, forming immense feeding flocks and rafts on the ocean surface, and breeding in vast, dense colonies. They are diurnal foragers at sea but become strictly nocturnal at their breeding colonies, primarily to avoid aerial predators like gulls and skuas. Foraging i...
The Sooty Shearwater boasts a truly circumglobal distribution, with its breeding grounds exclusively located on islands and coastal areas in the Southern Hemisphere. Major breeding colonies are found in New Zealand, southeastern Australia, Tasmania, Chile (especially the Juan Fernández Islands), ...
Near Threatened
- Sooty Shearwaters undertake the longest known annual migration of any animal, a figure-eight journey spanning up to 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) between Southern Hemisphere breeding grounds and Northern Hemisphere feeding areas. - They are also known as 'Muttonbirds' in New Zealand, where t...