Emily Chan
Over the Andes Mountains in Chile, a new species of storm petrel was discovered flying to its breeding grounds. The bird was soaring up from the Pacific Ocean and headed to the west.
Researchers determined it was a new species after taking a closer look at native storm petrels and finding that some of the birds were different.
Many bird watchers who live in towering apartment buildings in Santiago, Chile, or even just office workers staring out the windows of their skyscrapers can see storm petrels flitting through the air every day. The city of Santiago is located in central Chile, about 70 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean.
“Imagine that high up over one of the largest cities in the southern hemisphere, storm petrels fly daily from the ocean to the high mountains,” said a researcher named Alvaro Jaramillo. “Birders see them when watching the full moon over the city.”
Storm petrels are nocturnal seabirds that belong to the family Hydrobatidae, sometimes referred to as Oceanitidae, and there are about 20 species of them.
They spend most of their time out at sea and only return to land when it’s breeding season. They feed on small fish and planktonic crustaceans from the ocean’s surface.
Jaramillo and his colleagues from Chile, Peru, Hawaii, and New Zealand traveled up to the snow-capped mountains and used mist nets to capture, photograph, and study the birds.
When they compared the genetics of storm petrels in Santiago to other species in South America, they found major differences.
Jaramillo was amazed that the genetically distinct bird was “right under everyone’s noses during all of this time.” Storm petrels typically nest on islands, but now, others have been seen in inland deserts and mountains.
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