Abstract
IT is seldom that knowledge of a life-history which has baffled observation for sixty years has been completed so thoroughly as in Brian Robert's account of Wilson's petrel, Oceanites oceanicus (British Graham Land Expedition, Sci. Rep., 1, No. 2, 1940). Three seasons observations at a locality easily accessible and easily worked from the northern base-hut in the Argentine Islands, afforded material for a full description of breeding habits and development, and comparison of populations on different island groups has led to the recognition of four sub-species. These populations show no plumage distinctions and differ only in the mean of their measurements, the birds becoming progressively larger in higher latitudes. Incubation is shared by both sexes, which take alternate spells of about 48 hours, and hatching takes place in about six weeks. Thermograph records of the temperature within a burrow during incubation and the growth of the nestling show great steadiness, independent of the variations of the outside atmosphere. Mortality of chicks is high, about 65 per cent succumbing, most often on account of starvation due to the blocking of the burrows by snow. The migrations of Wilson's petrel are among the longest known, for these Antarctic-born birds visit the British Isles and Newfoundland, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, New Guinea and Northern Peru; and yet ringing of individuals has shown that they return each year to the same mate and the same burrow in the Antarctic. During migration between May and October a complete moult of plumage takes place. Many other matters of interest are dealt with in this valuable monograph.
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Life-cycle of Wilson's Petrel. Nature 147, 203 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147203b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147203b0