Scientific name:
Hydrobatidae

Natural spread:
southern oceans

this family of small, dark-gray, brown or black colored open sea-birds (the Bürzel is coated with many types of a white bond) includes the smallest representatives of the tube-noses and seabirds at all, dwarf-petrel: 13,8 to 15 cm.

Way of life Petrels fly densely above the water-surface there by fluttering fast with the wings or there-sailing in the upcurrent on the Luvseite of a wave-comb. Mainly at night, they fish for small life-natures of the plankton there and follow (however not all types) ships from time to time in order to search it tossed refuse for food over board.

Brood, types Only to the incubation, petrels start the country where the almost exclusively night-active birds of Nisthöhlen dig and its single egg 35 - for 45 days hatches. As also the Aufzucht of the (from one dense brown or gray Dunenkleid protected) boys lasts very long with all tube-noses. The 18-19 cm long Buntfüßige petrel (Oceanites oceanicus) Z. B. brood for 45 days and feed its young further 50 day; the brood lasts petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus) big with the 14 -19 cm 35 days. The boys of some other types of this family are looked after by the alto-birds even for 52-66 days. Initially, petrels choke an oleaginous secretion forth; later, they bring back fresh food of its trips from the open sea. The brood-reliefs take place at night exclusively with what petrels can move only awkwardly at country since its legs are too weak in order to carry even the low weight (until approximately 50 g) of these small birds. So, they take its wings to help, about "on all four" to the Erdgängen and crevices, to reach. Then, many diverse reputations resound in the colony. During the day, hotbeds of the petrels are effective completely empty on the other hand and leave, although the birds often brood densely in large colonies under the Erdoberfläche. Mammals dragged in by the human being mean a danger for the brooding petrels, who are specialized in its reproductive-biology - as almost all tube-noses - on uninhabited islands, on many hatcheries.

Spread Also the bearings-fortune of these birds of the open sea, that hikes far over the water-deserts of the oceans and nevertheless reaches again and again to its Niststätten unerringly, is astonishing. The main-spread-area of the petrels stretches over the oceans of the equator south; only quite few types constantly live in Meeresgebieten of the northern hemisphere or get on its seasonal hikes there.

So, the actual petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus) lives only in the Mediterranean and in the northern Atlantic, while the 20 cm big frigates, or white-face-petrel (Pelagodroma marina) in many subtypes the north, and South-Atlantic as well as almost the total Pacific populates. In the South-Atlantic, this petrel-type comes, that has its family white small-plumage as single, as northwards brood-bird as far as to the Salvage-Inseln and Tenerife before. Also the dark colorful-foot-petrel, who stretches its feet with the yellow swimming-skins in the glide characteristic for it far to the back, quite frequently appears in the Atlantic although it broods only at antarctic coasts.