* Sooty Shearwater  Ardenna grisea

Texas Coastal / Offshore Status: Very rare Visitor to the offshore waters of the Gulf. There are 21 documented records from offshore Texas. 

Habitat: This wide-ranging species is found in deep waters of both Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Similar Species: Although Sooty Shearwater is often indistinguishable from Short-tailed Shearwater (Pacific Ocean), this all dark shearwater with silvery underwing is unlike any other Atlantic Ocean shearwater.

* 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 Sooty Sherwater 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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