Big coastal storms may blow ashore some rarely seen birds

The recent storm that traveled up through the Gulf of Maine produced lasting effects on some of the birds in the region, as I was to find after corresponding with my friend Paul Markson in Orono.

Paul said he’d received a call from Jim Bird, science librarian at the University of Maine’s Fogler Library in Orono. Jim’s wife had just picked up an injured bird she had found in Milford and was on her way to drop it off at Avian Haven, a rehabilitation center in Freedom. She had no idea what the mystery bird was, however, describing it as “small, dark, with a white stripe on its back and webbed feet.”

Upon reading this, at first I made the same guesses Jim and Paul did: A possible small and dark bird, blown off course during a storm, could have meant it was a swallow or chimney swift or perhaps a member of the nightjar family, such as a whippoorwill, maybe a nighthawk. All three of these birds are supposed to be a long way away from Maine by now, however. Plus, none of them has webbed feet. Perhaps it was one of our small diving ducks or sea ducks.

Jim and Paul were able to get a very quick look at the bird before it continued on its way to the rehab center. Both were surprised to see it was a storm petrel.

Storm petrels are small -about the size of a robin- and resemble swallows more than they do other seabirds, such as the larger petrels, shearwaters, and gulls. Their flight is light and butterfly-like; I’ve often observed them from the decks of whale-watching boats as they dip and swerve low over the surface of the ocean.

There are three of these types of birds that are likely to be found in the North Atlantic: Wilson’s storm petrels, Leach’s storm petrels and the so-called band-rumped storm petrels. All three can be distinguished by slight variations in tail shape, as well as the size and shape of the white rump patches on their tails. As was later determined by the rehabilitator at Avian Haven, this bird was a Leach’s storm petrel.

This small, acrobatic seabird spends the majority of its life far out at sea. In fact, the only time it comes into land is to breed and raise young, and even then, it does so only on inaccessible islands that are often far from the mainland.

A curious and mysterious bird, this petrel digs a burrow into loose earth with its bill and feet, or uses existing space within rock crevices, to nest and raise its young. It nests in colonies which may consist of thousands of its kind; as you can imagine, parent birds returning to the nest burrow could face a daunting prospect of finding the right nest and its own young.

There are two factors thought to aid them in their recognition: the distinctive calls of their own young and the scent of the burrow itself. The sense of smell in birds – previously thought to be largely nonexistent – is apparently highly developed in these petrels. According to “The Sibley Guild to Bird Life and Behavior,” researchers have found that Wilson’s storm petrels can detect areas of high food concentrations through airborne chemicals that are released when zooplankton eat their phytoplankton prey. In essence, the storm petrels “may perceive the ocean as a landscape of smells.”

Storm petrels are strong fliers that may cover thousands of miles over the open ocean during migration, or remain airborne for long periods as they search for food. However, although they may use their feet somewhat to dig their burrows, they are otherwise clumsy and awkward on land. They shuffle along and must often use their wings for additional support.

It’s possible the bird found in Milford, blown inland by the hurricane, mistook a wet and glistening stretch of road for a body of water and was injured in the resulting hard landing. Sadly, it died at the rehabilitation center; but its presence here, so far from its home on the wild, open ocean, was still a cause of wonder and awe for me.

bdnsports@bangordailynews.net