On 6 September Todd McGrath reported seeing and photographing an ABA Code-5 White-chinned Petrel (Procellaria aequinoctialis) between San Miguel Island and Point Conception, California, from the deck of the Searcher.
The first North American record of this Southern Hemisphere species came from Texas in April 1986. The bird was originally treated as “Origin Uncertain" by the ABA Checklist Committee, but in 2007 it was accepted as a bird of natural occurrence (ABA Checklist, Seventh Edition, Pranty et al.).
White-chinned Petrel or “Shoemaker Petrel” is referred to in Oceanic Birds of South America (Robert Cushman Murphy). The local name "shoemaker" came from whalers who described the shrill chattering of the species that may make up a greater volume of noise than the voices of all of the other nesting seabirds. They breed on South Georgia, Prince Edward, Auckland, Kerguelen, Campbell, and the Antipodes Islands, in addition to Iles Crozet. They wander widely and usually disperse north only to to 6⁰S in Peru, northern New Zealand, and in Africa only north as far as the subtropics or 12 ⁰S (Albatrosses, Petrels & Shearwaters of the World, Onley and Scofield).
More good information can be found in Identification of “Black Petrels”, Genus Procellaria, by Steve N.G. Howell in the November/December 2006 issue of Birding.
They also breed in small numbers in the Falkland Islands
Posted by: Alan Henry | September 12, 2011 at 12:22 PM