European Storm Petrels Hydrobates pelagicus
Portland Bill, Dorset, UK. 24 May 2006

Conditions in the English Channel have been remarkably ‘un-May-like’ this week, and Martin Cade (warden at the wonderful Portland Bird Observatory (PBO) and keeper of the PBO website) has been posting some dramatic photos of European Storm Petrels Hydrobates pelagicus (or Stormies as they’re affectionately known) as they’ve gone past the rocks at Portland Bill in almost unprecedented numbers.

Storm Petrels are almost as irregular daytime visitors to Portland as I am these days, and as the forecast for the morning was for some sunshine between the heavy showers I figured that I would make the trip to PBO and see whether I could get some decent views of a bird I really don’t see very often. Stormies do breed relatively closely to Portland, but it takes a really strong blow to get them anywhere near the shore during daylight - they feed well out to sea during the day and once they get onto their breeding colonies they become almost nocturnal in an effort to avoid kleptoparasites and predators like gulls and skuas…

I find everything about petrels fascinating. I remember when I first began looking at moths I had the realisation that they occupied a whole new world that I knew virtually nothing about - just as most of the world was going to bed, moths everywhere were emerging and living their alternative lives in what to my eyes was almost total darkness - and petrels strike me as being pretty much like the moths of the bird world. I’m not going to push the analogy too hard for obvious reasons, but many of the Procellariiformes (the order to which petrels and shearwaters belong, and a word derived from the Latin for a ‘violent wind’ or ’storm’ procella) are featherweight creatures that occupy a niche and a habitat rarely entered by most diurnal and terrestrial human beings. When they aren’t nesting (in burrows on islands or rocky cliffs) these seemingly fragile bundles are roaming the world’s oceans, riding the rough air over massive waves and surviving storms and heavy rains in some of the most hostile conditions on the planet…it always amazes me that a bird as small as a Stormie (it’s about the same size as a Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica, and weighs no more than many modern mobile phones) can spend so much of its life so far from land and not die of the cold or of exhaustion.

Anyway - bringing things back to PBO - in strong winds and driving spray (the first photo below is taken by Pulpit Rock looking towards the Fleet) I wasn’t able to get the photos I wanted but I did get a few that were “atmospheric” (which translates as ‘not close-ups but lots of background too’!') and which give an indication - hopefully - of the incredible lives these remarkable birds lead - from flicking over wave crests to pattering over the water surface (the name petrel is a reference to St Peter who was allegedly able to walk on water, incidentally) skillfully picking up marine animals like small squid, copepods, and amphipods with their tiny bills.

Sadly, a few of these wonderful birds are always killed when storms bring them ashore (in what’s called a ‘wreck’) and into environments they can’t navigate properly: the last photo is of a Stormie found dead below a large window in Southwell (a small town on Portland). Handling the corpse really brought home just how incredibly light these birds are, and also how incredibly strong they must be…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All photographs copyright Charlie Moores.