Macronectes giganteus

Southern Giant Petrel

This blog is named after the Storm Petrel, Hydrobates pelagicus. It is a small bird, looking superficially like a swallow, and with a wingspan of less than 20 centimetres and a weight of about 30 grams. Looking back to my recent trip to South America, I see that the bird which made the biggest impression on me was a relative of the title species, the Southern Giant Petrel, Macronectes giganteus. It is on quite a different scale, with a wingspan of about two metres and a weight of about 5 kilograms. Thus it approaches the size of one of the smaller species of albatross. In form it looks a bit like a giant version of the Fulmar. The first ones I saw were in the harbour of Ushuaia. I then saw many more in flight during the cruise on the Beagle Channel. Before the trip I was not informed about how to distinguish Macronectes giganteus from the very similar Northern Giant Petrel, Macronectes halli. Fortunately for me, Eva was very active with her camera and took a photograph (see above) of an individual in Ushuaia which shows what I later learned to be a characteristic feature of M. giganteus, namely the fact that the tip of the bill is green. There does exist a light morph which is mainly white but we did not see any of those.

I will now mention something else which is related to the trip to South America. Someone in our group mentioned that Stefan Zweig has written a book about Magellan and since I admire Zweig’s writing I decided to read it. I remember that when I was at school we learned about Henry the Navigator and the other Portuguese explorers who found the sea route to India. At that time I had no interest in such things but now I enjoyed being reminded of this. When reading the part related to South America I had a much closer relationship to it having been in that region myself. If I could return to Punta Arenas I would look at the replica of the ship ‘Victoria’, the only ship of Magellan’s fleet which got back to Spain, with other eyes. What was the importance of Magellan’s voyage? It probably had much less economic influence than expected. It did have an important influence on ideas. The one part was that it gave a concrete demonstration that the world is round. A more subtle but fundamental point was the fact that the travellers discovered that they had lost a day although they had kept time very carefully. This led to lively discussions among the scholars in Europe.

Advertisement