Mottled petrel Pterodroma inexpectata

Identification Tips:

• Length: 11.5 inches
• Sexes similar
• Pelagic bird only coming ashore to breed
• Short dark bill with tube on top
• Dark eye patch
• Gray belly and upperparts
• Upperparts sometimes mottled with white
• Whitish throat and breast
• White underwing with dark bar across coverts
• Rapid flight

Similar species:

At close range, the dark belly and dark bar on underwing coverts are distinctive. From a distance, it can be told from shearwaters by its faster, more bounding flight.

Length and wingspan from: Robbins, C.S., Bruun, B., Zim, H.S., (1966). Birds of North America. New York: Western Publishing Company, Inc.