Audubon’s shearwater

The Audubon’s shearwater is the national bird of Saba (and can even be found on the Saban coat of arms), but you’ll be hard-pressed to find this bird on the island itself. The Audubon’s shearwater spends almost all of its time out at sea, only coming in to land when it’s time to breed and raise their young, which they do in burrows along craggy slopes. Males and females take turns sitting on eggs until they hatch, after which most of their time is spent soaring over the open ocean hunting fish for their nestlings. Although there are no native predators of this species on Saba, these birds only return to their nests under the cover of darkness to avoid leading threats back to their burrows.

With a wingspan of a little over 60 cm/2 feet, these birds are strong fliers that often travel long distances for food, both solo or in small groups. Flapping over such great distances is tiresome, so to conserve energy they use warm air currents and winds caused by cresting waves to propel them on their journeys. They dart from the sky and can even swim short distances underwater to catch fish, squid, and crustaceans.

The Audubon’s shearwater belongs to an order of seabirds called the “tubenoses” (named for the two raised tubes that enclose nostrils at the base of their beaks), and the nose on this species is indeed pretty special. They have an incredible sense of smell, which they use to locate food out in the open ocean, and since they spend most of their life at sea with no reliable source of fresh drinking water, they drink seawater instead, and use special glands in their tubenoses to sneeze out the excess salt as saline solution.

This species has a very wide range, and there are many closely related groups. Researchers disagree about whether these groups should be subspecies or be separated into individual species, but all of those that breed in the Caribbean belong to the same subspecies, Puffinus lherminieri lherminieri.