Diagnoza

Medium-sized petrel, slightly larger than the black-headed gull Chroicocephalus ridibundus  (length 45-50 cm, wingspan 102-112 cm, mass 450-1.000 g) and it like some gulls but it is mainly gliding and rarely flaps its wings; highly polymorphic with pale and dark morphs and all range of intermediates morphs; underside is white, in light morph back, wings and tail gray, grading to black at tips of wing feathers beyond wrist joint, but with characteristic white windows created by coloration at bases of inner primaries; upper surfaces of dark morph - dark gray; very charcteristic yellow beak, short and thick with long tubular nostrils; blue-gray legs; iris brown; sexes similar, adults and immatures inseparable except by dissection.

Porównanie

In all plumages are more similar to those of gulls than to other Procellariiformes from Northern Hemisphere (Snow & Perrins 1998) but flight pattern usually resembles the stiff-winged flapping and gliding of shearwaters and generally remaining close to ocean surface.

Autekologia

Omnivorous: fish, cephalopods, zooplankton (especially crustaceans), offal, carrion and observed predating live Common Murre (Uria aalge), Thick-billed Murre (U. lomvia) and Dovekie (Alle alle); feeding on sea in concentrations of ice associated macrozooplankton in local upwellings, tide and rip currents, and eddies caused by landforms and ice; large foraging range - 250-1000 km from colony but some also foraging close to colony.

Występowanie geograficzne

North Russia (including Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Kuril Is., Sea of Okhotsk, Commander Is., Bering Sea coast and Chukchi Peninsula), Greenland, Jan Mayen I., Bear I., Svalbard, Iceland, Faeroes, British islands, small colonies on the European mainland (Norway, Germany, France), Alaska, British Columbia, arctic and eastern Canada; after breeding scattered over seas of the Northern Hemisphere but numerous only north of 35-40°N; observed on the Baltic and Mediterranean and far inland in Czechoslovakia (5 winter records); in Poland found only 6 dead specimens (February-April in years 1941-2014) from Krynica Morska, Mielno, Władysławowo, Gdynia, Darłówko i Łazy (Stawarczyk et al. 2018).

Zasięg czasowy

Mid Pleistocene (12 ka) – Recent. 

Materiały muzealne

prehistoric remains known from Greenland (2 collections), Norway (1), United States (14); in Poland one dead specimen housed in Muzeum of Słupsk (Tomiałojć, 1990).

Literatura

Linnaeus K. 1761. Fauna Svecica, part 2, Stockholm.

Mallory, M. L., S. A. Hatch, & D. N. Nettleship 2020. Northern Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.norful.01

Snow, D.W. & Perrins, C.M. (eds.) 1998. The Birds of the Western Palearctic. Concise Edition. Vol. 1. Non-passerines. Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York.

Stawarczyk T., Cofta T., Kajzer Z., Lontkowski J., & Sikora A. 2017. Rzadkie ptaki Polski. Studio B & W. Wojciech Janecki. Sosnowiec.

Tomiałojć, L. 1990. Ptaki Polski rozmieszczenie i liczebność. Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.