British Pterodromae

A lucky few (probably more than a few by now) will have a Pterodroma petrel on their UK list. Whilst looking for photos for my webpage https://www.aabirdpix.com/BRITISH LIST/british-list.htm, I made an interesting discovery regarding the official British List. Fea's Petrel isn't on it, but Zino's and Soft-plumaged Petrel are. So if you go by the official list you probably haven't seen a British Pterodroma, unless you were on the Scilly pelagic in 2020, or the northeast coast seawatching in 2021 (the 2025 Cornish bird hasn't yet been accepted).

 Let me explain. If you've seen a "Fea's-type" it was almost certainly a Desertas Petrel, but could have been a Zino's. Had you seen it before 2010 (when it was on CategoryA) it would have been a Fea's Petrel, assuming you could have eliminated Zino's. Had you seen such a bird in the last century it would have been a Soft-plumaged Petrel, which it almost certainly wasn't. Now you've only seen an unidentified bird, unless you know something the world's best seawatchers don't. 

It is yet again down to those people who work in laboratories, some of whom never get into the field anyway. Put simply, in the beginning was Soft-plumaged Petrel, which was split in to three with the addition of Zino's and Fea's Petrels. It's the only taxon which is easily identifiable at sea. Zino's and Fea's are very similar, but can be identified with good views or photos, and the ID criteria are now well known. Most birds from land-based seawatches are either/or, plus in 2009  Fea's was split in to Cape Verde and Desertas Petrels, which on current knowledge are all but indistinguishable at sea, except an educated guess based on location and state of primary moult.

Difficulties of identification are illustrated by the bird below, which was identified by most people on the Atlantic Odyssey at the time (2005) as a dark-morph Soft-plumaged Petrel, a morph rarely seen, let alone photographed. A few years later, with more info available, I began to have doubts, so I sent the photo to Peter Harrison. He pointed out several features which eliminated any of the "Soft-plumaged" group, it is in fact an oiled Atlantic Petrel. Better photographic equipment has largely eliminated such errors, but I put it in an identification app. and it came up with Bulwer's Petrel! You can't beat experience. None of which helps if you let a committee "overrule" you!

I think Avilist is a great, and much-needed, concensus for birders to work from, but it will never be the end story, just as previous lists weren't, because scientific knowledge is an ongoing process, and much is theory rather than proven fact. Hence in a space of a few years we have gone from one species of petrel to four, but in the case of Redpolls the reverse has happened. But of the five forms of Redpoll four are quite dstinctive and can readily be identified, whereas two of the Petrels can't. I "support" Avilist, and organisations like the BOU have to follow the best evidence at any one time, but to use official lists to detail personal sightings is ridiculous, unless you are so obsessive about numbers that you are just a lister rather than a birder. My good friend Mike (r.i.p.), who, uncharacteristically, would never count the Booted Eagle in 1999, was luckily on a series of Madeira pelagics with me when we recorded record numbers of both Desertas and Zino's Petrels, close enough to identify with the naked eye. A report of this trip is on my website, but do bear in mind that any pelagic trip involves a large amount of luck, which was certainly with us on that trip. https://www.aabirdpix.com/Trips/madeira.htm

Warning:  The above report contains scenes which some viewers may find extremely gripping.

Such was the memorable nature of "Pterodroma Ptuesday" as we dubbed it, I had a couple of t-shirts made up, which make a change from some available nowadays. The remaining two days of the pelagics added several Storm-Petrels and a Scopoli's Shearwater, but I may have been paying by the word!