Description
Adults birds are 46–47 cm in length, with a 97–99 cm wingspan, and have been recorded to weigh 342-425 g. The upperside of Buller's Shearwater is bluish grey. A blackish stripe runs from the tertiary remiges to the primary wing coverts. The primary remiges are blackish also; the two black areas do not meet at the hand however; the area between them is a rather light gray, under bright light it may appear almost white. With the bird facing upwards, the pattern gives the impression of a broken black "M", with light gray interspersing areas.
The underside is bright white; on the head the upperside's grey extends town to eye height and the white cheeks may shine up conspicuously, as in the smaller shearwaters of Puffinus sensu stricto. The rectrices are blackish and the tail is wedge-shaped; bill and iris are dark. Fledged juveniles already have the adult's coloration; the nestlings are covered in grey down feathers.
Compared to other shearwaters, the species is unusually easy to identify at sea by its combination of considerable size and the distinctive M-shaped banding pattern on its upperside while flying, uniquely among its genus and more akin to some gadfly petrels (Pterodroma), the prions (Pachyptila) and their relative, the Blue Petrel (Halobaena caerulea). These are all much smaller birds, perhaps two-thirds in length and wingspan and less than half in bulk of Buller's Shearwater.
Read more about this topic: Buller's Shearwater
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)