Endangered
Westland Petrel
Procellaria westlandica
The Westland petrel,, also known as the Westland black petrel, is a moderately large seabird in the petrel family Procellariidae, that is endemic to New Zealand.
Appearance
It is entirely dark blackish-brown, with black legs and feet. Some individuals may have a few white feathers. The bill is pale yellow with a dark tip.
The adult Westland petrel is a stocky bird, weighing around 1,100 grams (39 oz). However the female specimen weighed slightly more than the male.
Published measurements include mass about 137.6.
Described by Robert Falla in 1946, it is a stocky bird weighing approximately 1,100 grams (39 oz), and is one of the largest of the burrowing petrels.
Range and habitat
The Westland petrel is endemic to New Zealand. It spends most of its life at sea, only returning to land to breed, and breeds only in a small region of the South Island's West Coast. The breeding range covers an 8 km (5.0 mi) wide strip between Barrytown and Punakaiki, specifically from the Punakaiki River to Waiwhero (Lawson) Creek.
The only known breeding colonies of the Westland petrel are in New Zealand, in a small area of forest-covered coastal foothills between Barrytown and Punakaiki on the South Island's West Coast.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
Westland petrels can forage during both day and night, preying primarily on fish, some squid, and less commonly on crustaceans. Their strong vision allows them to spot prey, and recent studies have shown that smell is also important to petrel foraging, specific odours seeming to attract the birds to certain areas.
The Westland petrel is one of the few petrel species that still nest on the mainland. Westland petrels nest in burrows dug 1 to 2 metres into the hillside, often on a steep slope.
In crisis
The loss of a breeding colony can therefore have severe consequences for the population. Other significant potential threats to the breeding colonies are predation by feral pigs and vagrant dogs from nearby settlements. As of 2021, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified this species as endangered, and the New Zealand Department of Conservation classified this species as "At Risk: Naturally Uncommon" under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.
Commercial fishing is another source of threat because petrels are sometimes accidentally captured in fishing nets. As of 2021, this species is regarded as being endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
Westland Petrel is 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 Westland Petrel, Wikidata item Q276196. 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.
