Texas Pelagics

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Great Shearwater

by | Jun 15, 2022

* Great Shearwater  Ardenna gravis

Texas Coastal / Offshore Status: There are 32 documented records of Great Shearwater all in Coastal / Offshore areas. Rare visitor has occurred in all months except Fed and Mar, but most records are from July to December. 

Habitat: offshore and pelagic waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Similar Species: See Cory’s Shearwater and Black-capped Petrel.

* Texas Review Species, requiring written or photographic documentation to TBRC.
(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 Great 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. 

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