Tweeters:

Concerning the most abundant bird:

When in New Zealand, I discussed the question about the most abundant
bird in the world with John Warham, New Zealand seabird biologist
extraordinaire. His vote was Sooty Shearwater. I asked him how many he
thought there were in the world, and, in typical British fashion, he
answered "1000 million." I said "No way! There can't be!"

He then told me about one island south of New Zealand (in the Snares,
which have a tiny fraction of the world's Sooty Shearwater population),
where he told me about 6 million Sooties breeding on an island about 2
square miles in area. And he claimed there are many such islands, off
New Zealand, Australia, and South America. So even if Sooties are not
the most abundant, they're surely near the top.

After spending time at sea through the Pacific and Antarctic, I agree
that Sooty Shearwaters are much more abundant and widespread than
Wilson's Storm-Petrels. Wilson's are clearly very abundant locally in
the Antarctic, but nothing like the abundance of Sooties in several
oceans around the world. For example, during good shearwater years
Sooties may outnumber all the breeding species combined along our
northwest coast (although their abundance here shows indications of
waning in the last decade).

I think the original reference about Wilson's Storm-Petrel being most
abundant is from one of Roger Tory Peterson's early coffee table books
about birds of the world, in which he describes one of his trips to
Antarctica.

Bob Boekelheide
Sequim, WA

>Help! Anybody out there have the answer to this one?
>
>Gene Hunn.
>
>
>>Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 16:49:38 -0700
>>To: "Wendy Johnson" <WJohnson at evansgroup.com>
>>From: Hal Opperman <halop at accessone.com>
>>Subject: Re: Media FYI
>>Cc: hunnhome at accessone.com
>>
>>At 11:41 AM -0600 21/10/1997, Wendy Johnson wrote:
>>
>>>Hal,
>>>
>>>Could you or another SAS board member confirm this?
>>>
>>>BIRD POPULATIONS - NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. I'm a researcher at National
>>>Geographic trying to determine what is the most abundant bird in the
>>>world. We list the Wilson's storm petrel as the most abundant. Does anyone
>>>have a good reference? >>> Jeanette Howard Email: jhoward at ngs.org Phone:
>>>202-857-7232