Order
Procellariiformes
Family
Oceanitidae
Genus
Oceanites
 
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Version 1.0

This is a historic version of this account.  Current version

SPECIES

Wilson's Storm-Petrel Oceanites oceanicus

Jacob Drucker
Version: 1.0 — Published March 8, 2013

Diet and Foraging

Diet

The following summary is based on Brooke (2004).

Feeding almost entirely aerial, by dipping (73% of observations) or pattering (27%: Harper 1987). May occasionally dive to shallow depths to retrieve food (Murphy 1936). Ridoux (1994) summarizes several studies that show diet during the breeding season to be dominated by crustacea, either euphausiids and amphipods at subantarctic sites ormainly euphausiids near Antarctica. In the Ross Sea, however, Ainley et al. (1984) found cephalopods (46% by weight) to be almost as important as euphausiids (36%). Fish also are consumed, and at South Georgia, are all myctophids 50-85 mm long (Croxall et al. 1988). Diet outside the breeding season is poorly known, but probably includes crustacea, small fish and their eggs, mollusks, nereid worms, oil droplets, and cetacean feces (Cramp and Simmons 1977, Marchand and Higgins 1990). Studies have shown conflicting results as to whether olfaction is key for finding food (Jouventin and Robin 1984, Nevitt 1999).

Foraging Behavior

Recommended Citation

Drucker, J. (2013). Wilson's Storm-Petrel (Oceanites oceanicus), version 1.0. In Neotropical Birds Online (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/nb.wispet.01