Mottled petrel
Pterodroma inexpectata
Identification Tips:
- 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.