Bryan's Shearwater

Seabirds often provide good examples of persistent taxonomic uncertainty. Many species are morphologically very similar, they spend most of their life at sea, and when they do come to land to breed, they often breed at remote, inaccessible sites making them difficult to study. In 1963 a small Shearwater was collected on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean. It was tentatively identified as a Little Shearwater (Puffinus assimilis assimilis), however intermediate morphological characteristics and its small size make it a poor match for this species. In collaboration with Peter Pyle and Rob Fleischer we conducted morphometric and phylogenetic analyses on the Midway Shearwater specimen and found that it does not belong to any currently described species, thus we described this species as Bryan's Shearwater.Pyle P, Welch AJ, Fleischer RC. 2011. A new species of shearwater (Puffinus) recorded from Midway Atoll, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Condor 113:518-527. Abstract. Here is a nice article by the American Bird Conservancy.

Bryan's Shearwater, photo by Reginald David

Recent news about Bryan's Shearwater

Peter Pyle and colleagues published a paper documenting observations of Bryan's Shearwaters on Midway in the winters of 1990/1991 and 1991/1992, and describes the location and habitat from which the type specimen was collected in 1963.

Pyle P, David R, Eilerts BD, Amerson AB, Borker A, McKown M. 2014. Second record of Bryan's Shearwater Puffinus bryani from Midway Atoll, with notes on habitat selection, vocalizations, and at-sea distribution. Marine Ornithology 42: 5-8. Abstract/PDF.

See this webpage for video and audio clips of the bird, and to compare the vocalizations of Bryan's Shearwater with other species.

Additional work suggests that Bryan's shearwaters survive and may breed in the islands around Japan. An article describing recent observations of Bryan's Shearwater in the Bonin Islands has been published in Condor:

Kawakami K, Eda M, Horikoshi K, Suzuki H, Chiba H, Hiraoka T. 2012. Bryan's Shearwater have survived on the Bonin Islands, Northwestern Pacific. Condor 114:507-512. Abstract.

*Update! On March 25, 2015, a news article reported that researchers from the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute have discovered Bryan's Shearwater nesting sites on the uninhabited Higashijima island of the Ogasawara (Bonin) chain, about 1,000 km south of Tokyo. Ten birds were observed, some with eggs in their nests.