Теңіз құстары: Қыршолдақтар туралы ақпарат

Seabird

Shearwaters are medium sized long winged seabirds in the petrel family Procellariidae. They have a global marine distribution, but are most common in temperate and cold waters, and are pelagic outside the breeding season.

These tubenose birds fly with stiff wings and use a "shearing" flight technique (flying very close to the water and seemingly cutting or "shearing" the tips of waves) to move across wave fronts with the minimum of active flight. This technique gives the group its English name. Some small species, like the Manx shearwater are cruciform in flight, with their long wings held directly out from their bodies.

Many shearwaters are long distance migrants, perhaps most spectacularly sooty shearwaters, which cover distances in excess of from their breeding colony on the Falkland Islands (52°S 60°W) to as far as 70° north latitude in the North Atlantic Ocean off northern Norway. One study found Sooty shearwaters migrating nearly a year, which would give them the longest animal migration ever recorded electronically.

Shearwaters come to islands and coastal cliffs only to breed. They are nocturnal at the colonial breeding sites, preferring moonless nights to minimize predation. They nest in burrows and often give eerie contact calls on their night time visits. They lay a single white egg. The chicks of some species, notably short tailed and sooty shearwaters, are subject to harvesting from their nest burrows for food, a practice known as muttonbirding, in Australia and New Zealand.

They feed on fish, squid, and similar oceanic food. Some will follow fishing boats to take scraps, commonly the sooty shearwater; these species also commonly follow whales to feed on fish disturbed by them. Their primary feeding technique is diving, with some species diving to depths of .

Phylogeny of the shearwaters based on a study by Joan Ferrer Obiol and collaborators published in 2022. Only 14 of the 21 recognised species in the genus Puffinus were included.