page_title: Leach's storm petrel
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Leach's storm petrel / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch&#x3a;&#32; Ei von Wellenläufer. Sammlung von René de Naurois /Jacques Perrin de Brichambaut.English&#x3a;&#32; Egg of Leach's storm petrel. Collection of René de Naurois /Jacques Perrin de Brichambaut.Français&#x202f;&#x3a;&#32; Œuf de Océanite cul-blanc. Collection de René de Naurois/Jacques Perrin de Brichambaut.
context_page_description: Leach's storm petrel or Leach's petrel is a small seabird of the tubenose order. It is named after the British zoologist William Elford Leach. The scientific name is derived from Ancient Greek. Oceanodroma is from okeanos, "ocean" and dromos, "runner", and leucorhoa is from leukos, "white" and orrhos, "rump".
  It breeds on inaccessible islands in the colder northern areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It nests in colonies close to the sea in well concealed areas such as rock crevices, shallow burrows, or even logs. It lays a single white egg, which often has a faint ring of spots at the large end. This storm petrel is strictly nocturnal at the breeding sites to avoid predation by gulls and skuas, and even avoids coming to land on clear, moonlit nights. The largest colony of Leach's storm petrels can be found on Baccalieu Island of eastern Canada, an ecological reserve with more than 3 million pairs of the birds.
context_section_description: Lifespan for this bird is unusually long for a bird of such small size, with an average of 25 years and a maximum recorded lifespan of 38+ years (a bird banded between 1979-1982 recaptured in 2019 still healthy). In 2003, Haussmann et al.  found that the bird's telomeres lengthen with age, the only known example to date of such a phenomenon. However, this phenomenon likely also occurs in other members of the Procellariiformes, which all have a rather long lifespan compared to their size.
  They feed primarily on plankton, including euphausiids, copepods, and a form of amphipod that is parasitic to jellyfish gonadal pouches.  They also feed to a large extent on myctophids (lantern fish), which only occur at the surface at night in water over the continental slope.  Individuals have been observed to feed at distances up to 1000 km from their breeding colony.  A breeding individual stores energy-rich lipids in a sac anterior to its stomach, which is used to either sustain itself while incubating its single egg, to feed its chick, or as a defensive mechanism when caught by a predator, as do many other Procellariformes. Some evidence shows that parents feed their chicks different prey species from what they consume themselves.  Parent birds also accidentally feed their chicks plastic debris, which they mistake for food items floating on the surface of the ocean. Chicks grow to a prefledging weight almost double  that of when they actually fledge from the burrow in late September.  During their migration, they travel to waters associated with the North Equatorial Current, or to waters associated with the Benguela Current. Fall storms can cause these young fledging individuals to wreck on the mainland.
caption: Egg of Leach's storm petrel
  (coll.MHNT)
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