Audubon’s Shearwater  Puffinus lherminieri

Texas Coastal / Offshore Status: Rare to uncommon in offshore Gulf of Mexico waters in summer and fall (August – September). Less common than Cory’s Shearwater.

Habitat: pelagic waters of the Gulf of Mexico, usually where the water depth is greater than 100 fathoms. Unlike Cory’s, this species is very rarely seen in the relatively shallow waters over the continental shelf. Audubon’s Shearwater prefers warmer waters than Manx Shearwater.

Similar Species: Audubon’s Shearwater most closely resembles Manx Shearwater. Audubon’s differs from Manx, by having relatively shorter wings, longer tail, and most importantly black undertail coverts.

(1) TOS Handbook of Texas Birds; by Mark W. Lockwood and Brush Freeman (2005)
(2) Lower Texas Coast Status from Brad McKinney’s annotated checklist (updated 2009).

Seasonal Occurrence Graph

Texas Pelagics Sightings Distribution 

Map 1) The live Google map above shows the geographic distribution of Audubon’s Shearwater found in Offshore Texas from lat-long data I’ve captured from 35 years of Texas Pelagics. 
Click on the box in the upper left of the map to view the map legend.
Click on each sighting symbol and the data label will appear showing the time, date and the number of birds seen.
Click on the symbol on the top right of the map to view a larger map.

The next two map images are copied from eBird.

Map 2) The map below is zoomed into Texas and Louisiana to show individual locations.

Map 3) The bottom map is zoomed out to show the GOM, the northern Caribbean Sea and the adjacent western tropical Atlantic ocean. 

© Copyright 1998-2022 Garett Hodne. All materials on all sites within this domain are copyrighted by Garett Hodne. Some individual items may be copyrighted by the author, photographer, or other sources as noted. All rights are reserved. All material is available for personal and private use only. However all material herein may not be reprinted, re-distributed, copied to other websites or reproduced for public use in any way without the express advanced written permission of the webmaster.