On remote islands where they breed, some small seabirds come and go at night. Thus they evade big daytime killers like skuas and gulls. Their secret nests are in burrows or under rocks.
Leach's Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) is one of these furtive little birds. They are smaller than robins, though with longer wings. It's said they don't even venture out if the moonlight is too bright.
Visiting Gull Island in Newfoundland, Franklin Russell, author of a moody 1965 book The Secret Islands: An Exploration ran across a petrel in trouble.
She had gotten snared in tangled grass as she sneaked out before dawn with the other petrels. Russell picked her up. She screamed. He untangled her and tried to get her to go back down any burrow, but she darted away. She flew at top speed, away from the island – and instantly 50-odd gulls were after her with intent to catch and eat. These would have been big Herring Gulls or Black-backed Gulls.
“The petrel was so well ringed by her enemies that to escape she would have had to run among at least ten gulls in any direction she tried to break out. This seemed impossible; but the petrel was not concerned with possibility or reason. Never for a moment was there any relaxation of the thrust and parry of the hunt. All the creatures were absorbed,” writes Russell.
The chase hurtled through the air above a raft of thousands of puffins floating on the sea. Suddenly the puffins rose off the water. “...something alarmed them. Perhaps it was the intensity of the gull attacks; perhaps the petrel screamed her anguish.” Russell saw the petrel veer toward the cloud of flying puffins and vanish into their midst.
Huh? The gulls hung around where the puffin had been before giving up.
Russell writes that he watched the departing flock of puffins with binoculars and “saw, finally, a tiny shape twist away from their mass.”
A happy ending for the petrel. Russell says puffins (Fratercula arctica) aren't afraid of gulls. Puffins go to and from their nest burrows in daylight. But gulls are serious predators on puffins, though not when the puffins are going around in crowds thousands strong.
Probably the puffins weren't deliberately rescuing the petrel. Probably some of the puffins were freaked out by the gulls pursuing the frantic out-of-place petrel, and decided to leave and go some place less creepy, right now. The other thousands of puffins didn't intend to be left behind if something was wrong, so they all took off, forming a screen into which the petrel shook her pursuers. Good deal.
Leach's Storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) is one of these furtive little birds. They are smaller than robins, though with longer wings. It's said they don't even venture out if the moonlight is too bright.
Visiting Gull Island in Newfoundland, Franklin Russell, author of a moody 1965 book The Secret Islands: An Exploration ran across a petrel in trouble.
She had gotten snared in tangled grass as she sneaked out before dawn with the other petrels. Russell picked her up. She screamed. He untangled her and tried to get her to go back down any burrow, but she darted away. She flew at top speed, away from the island – and instantly 50-odd gulls were after her with intent to catch and eat. These would have been big Herring Gulls or Black-backed Gulls.
“The petrel was so well ringed by her enemies that to escape she would have had to run among at least ten gulls in any direction she tried to break out. This seemed impossible; but the petrel was not concerned with possibility or reason. Never for a moment was there any relaxation of the thrust and parry of the hunt. All the creatures were absorbed,” writes Russell.
The chase hurtled through the air above a raft of thousands of puffins floating on the sea. Suddenly the puffins rose off the water. “...something alarmed them. Perhaps it was the intensity of the gull attacks; perhaps the petrel screamed her anguish.” Russell saw the petrel veer toward the cloud of flying puffins and vanish into their midst.
Huh? The gulls hung around where the puffin had been before giving up.
Russell writes that he watched the departing flock of puffins with binoculars and “saw, finally, a tiny shape twist away from their mass.”
A happy ending for the petrel. Russell says puffins (Fratercula arctica) aren't afraid of gulls. Puffins go to and from their nest burrows in daylight. But gulls are serious predators on puffins, though not when the puffins are going around in crowds thousands strong.
Probably the puffins weren't deliberately rescuing the petrel. Probably some of the puffins were freaked out by the gulls pursuing the frantic out-of-place petrel, and decided to leave and go some place less creepy, right now. The other thousands of puffins didn't intend to be left behind if something was wrong, so they all took off, forming a screen into which the petrel shook her pursuers. Good deal.