Short-tailed Shearwater

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Short-tailed Shearwater

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Procellariiformes
Family:	Procellariidae
Genus:	Puffinus
Species:	P. tenuirostris

Binomial name

Puffinus tenuirostris
(Temminck, 1835)

The Short-tailed Shearwater Puffinus tenuirostris, also commonly known as muttonbird in Australia, is the most abundant seabird species in Australia, and is one of the few Australian native birds that is commercially harvested. It is a migratory species that breeds in Australia and migrates to the Northern Hemisphere for the boreal summer. It is worth noting that the muttonbird of New Zealand is a different species, the Sooty Shearwater; the Wedge-tailed Shearwater is also called thus.

Tis species appears to be related to the New Zealand muttonbird and the Great Shearwater, all blunt-tailed, black-billled species, but its precise relationships are obscure (Austin, 1996; Austin et al., 2004). These are among the larger species of shearwater which might belong into a separate genus, Ardenna (Penhallurick & Wink, 2004).

Each parent feeds the chick for 2–3 days and then leaves for up to three weeks in search of food. These foraging trips can cover a distance of 15,000 km (9,300 mi) and mean the chick may be left unattended for over a week. When the time the chicks have reached independence they weigh around 900 g (2 lb), and may be heavier than their parents. The young are killed for food and oil.

Each austral winter, the Shearwaters migrate to the seas off the Aleutian Islands and Kamchatka. In the austral spring, they travel down the coast of California before crossing the Pacific back to Australia.

[edit] References

Austin, Jeremy J. (1996): Molecular Phylogenetics of Puffinus Shearwaters: Preliminary Evidence from Mitochondrial Cytochrome b Gene Sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 6(1): 77–88. DOI:10.1006/mpev.1996.0060 (HTML abstract)

Austin, Jeremy J.; Bretagnolle, Vincent & Pasquet, Eric (2004): A global molecular phylogeny of the small Puffinus shearwaters and implications for systematics of the Little-Audubon's Shearwater complex. Auk 121(3): 847–864. DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2004)121[0847:AGMPOT]2.0.CO;2 HTML abstract

BirdLife International (2004). Puffinus tenuirostris. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 10 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern

Penhallurick, John & Wink, Michael (2004): Analysis of the taxonomy and nomenclature of the Procellariformes based on complete nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. Emu 104(2): 125-147. DOI:10.1071/MU01060 (HTML abstract)