Swinhoe's storm petrel or Swinhoe's petrel (Hydrobates monorhis) is a small, all-brown seabird of the storm petrel family Hydrobatidae.

Etymology

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.

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Distribution

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 population at a minimum of 130,000 pairs, confirming that the species has a very large population. However, Birds Korea (2010) state that c. 100,000 pairs nest on Gugeul Islet, implying that possibly over 75% of the global population breed on one very small island. The species nests at six or seven breeding islets in South Korea (Chang-Yong Choi in litt. 2012). There is apparently anecdotal evidence that some colonies are in decline (N. Moores in litt. 2011). The population is expected to undergo a moderately rapid decline over the next three generations, owing primarily to the impact of introduced species. Since then a number of storm petrels exhibiting plumage and structural characteristics have been recorded at sea, principally in the North Atlantic, while birds were trapped during the summer months in France (1989), England (1989 (two birds), 1990 (with birds retrapped from 1991 to 1994)), Spain (1994), Norway (1996, 1997), and again Madeira (1991, 1994). Other than the east North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea a number of other individuals have been identified in the western North Atlantic. Records of single birds off Hatteras, North Carolina, on 20 August 1993, on 8 August 1998, and 2 June 2008 have all been accepted as valid North American records.

References

  • Species factsheet - BirdLife International
  • Birding Israel
  • Flicker Field Guide Birds of the World Photographs
  • Russian Nature Photographs
  • Video off Madeira Island