Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ALBATROSSES AND PETRELS

THE PETRELS (Family Procellariida)

The Petrels take their name from the fact that they often appear to walk on the surface of the water, as the Apostle Peter is said to have done, the word being derived from the Latin petrellus, meaning literally”little Peter.”

They of course do not actually walk on the water, but the bodies of some species are so small and light that they are able, with only the slightest seeming exertion, to keep the moving feet just touching the water, and then they may seem to be walking on its surface.

The Petrels constitute a large, well-marked group of birds embracing upward of twenty genera and one hundred species, of which number more than thirty have been found in North America. They are strictly birds of the ocean, never venturing near the land except at the breeding season, and even then they seem in haste to be gone.”

None of the Petrels,”says Professor Newton,”are endowed with any brilliant coloring — sooty black, gray of various tints (one of which approaches to and is often called”blue"), and white being the only hues their plumage exhibits; but their graceful flight, and their companionship where no other life is visible around a lonely vessel on the wildest oceans, gives them an interest to beholders.”In distribution the Petrels are found throughout all seas and oceans of the world, but they are most abundant both in kinds and individuals in the Southern Ocean.

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