Wedge-tailed Shearwater

Fascinating facts about the Wedge-tailed Shearwater

• The wedge-tailed shearwater is the largest of the tropical shearwaters, giving it a bulk that sets it apart from its warm-water relatives. Its name comes from the pronounced wedge-shaped tail, a feature that aids its gliding over the ocean. The bird's dark bill and salmon-pink legs are set far back on the body, an adaptation that improves its swimming efficiency while hunting.
• Two-thirds of the wedge-tailed shearwater's diet is fish, with goatfish being the most frequently captured species. It also supplements this diet with squid and crustaceans, hunting pelagically across the open ocean. Rather than surface feeding, the birds mainly employ a contact-dipping technique, flying low and snatching prey directly from the water's surface. This feeding style reflects the importance of fish in its nutrition and shapes its foraging behaviour.
• During foraging trips, the majority of wedge-tailed shearwaters dive, with 83% of individuals recorded making underwater plunges. The average maximum depth reached is 14 m, yet some birds have been documented diving as deep as 66 m, demonstrating considerable underwater capability. These dives are part of a 2001 study that used depth recorders to track their hunting excursions, highlighting how the species exploits both surface and deeper water prey zones.
• Wedge-tailed shearwaters show strong natal philopatry, travelling back to the very island where they hatched to start breeding. They join colonies that are typically on small tropical islands, where breeding timing differs between hemispheres - February in the north and September in the south. After returning, they wait until they are four years old before attempting their first nest. This age-specific start helps maintain the population's local continuity.
• When the breeding periods of wedge-tailed shearwaters and Bonin petrels overlap, the returning shearwaters will evict any petrel chicks still occupying burrows. The displaced chicks are either killed or forced out, ensuring the shearwaters have space for their own eggs. This conflict occurs because both species use the same island burrows for nesting. Such aggressive defence of nesting sites is a notable aspect of their breeding behaviour.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Wedge-tailed Shearwater

As the sun sets over the vast expanse of ocean, the Wedge-tailed Shearwater takes to the skies, its slender wings beating in a slow, deliberate rhythm as it glides effortlessly above the waves. With a fluid, almost ethereal motion, it banks and turns, its wedge-shaped tail slicing through the air as it rides the updrafts of warm air, a master of the wind and the currents. In this elemental realm, the shearwater is a true monarch, its remarkable ability to cover vast distances with minimal effort a testament to its ancient, honed instincts.

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