Critically Endangered
Newell's Shearwater
Puffinus newelli
This shearwater is the only seabird endemic to the Hawaiian Islands.
Appearance
The upperparts are black with a brown tinge while the underparts are white. The dark colouration on the face extends below the eye and is sharply separated from the white throat. There is a white patch on the flanks, extending onto the sides of the rump.
It is a fairly small shearwater, 33 centimetres (13 in) in length. The bird weighs 0.340–0.425 kilograms (0.75–0.94 lb).
Range and habitat
It breeds in at least 20 colonies on mountain slopes in the Hawaiian Islands. The main colonies are on Kauaʻi, on slopes around the Alakaʻi Plateau, Waipio Valley, Puuao, Waihee Valley, and probably in the Mokolea Mountains. Its distribution on the other islands is uncertain but it is known to breed on Molokaʻi and the island of Hawaiʻi and may breed on Oʻahu, Maui and Lānaʻi.
This shearwater is the only seabird endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. It was formerly a much more common bird with a wider breeding distribution in the islands.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Its diet is little known but includes squid and small fish. It dives into the water to catch its prey, swimming down to a depth of up to 10 meters using its wings to move forward.
It is attracted to schools of tuna and gathers in flocks with other seabird species to catch prey driven to the surface by the tuna. By 1908, it was thought to be extinct but was rediscovered in 1947 and found breeding on Kauaʻi in 1967. The nest site is a burrow dug into a steep slope, usually sheltered by uluhe (Dicranopteris linearis ferns).
In crisis
It has declined due to habitat loss and predation by introduced species such as mongooses, rats, cats and barn owls. The population was estimated at 84,000 birds in the mid-1990s.
Newell's Shearwater is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Newell's Shearwater, Wikidata item Q3131786. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
