White-faced storm petrel
species of bird
The white-faced storm petrel (Pelagodroma marina), (Māori: takahikare) also known as white-faced petrel or frigate petrel, is a small seabird of the austral storm petrel family Oceanitidae. It is the only member of the monotypic genus Pelagodroma. It is widely distributed across the northern and southern hemisphere, especially around the coastal and open ocean waters of southern Australia, New Zealand, Tristan da Cunha, Cabo Verde, the Canary islands and the Selvagens islands.
Subspecies and their distributions
Here are six recognised subspecies, breeding in island colonies through subtropical to subantarctic regions of the Atlantic, Indian and south-western Pacific Oceans in both hemisphere:
P. m. albiclunis Murphy & Irving, 1951 – Kermadec Islands
P. m. dulciae Mathews, 1912 – islands off southern Australia, Houtman Abrolhos in Western Australia, east to the Broughton Islands in New South Wales and Tasmania.
P. m. eadesi or eadoserum Bourne, 1953– Cape Verde Islands, within the North Atlantic.
P. m. hypoleuca (Webb, Berthelot & Moquin-Tandon, 1842)– Savage Islands (Selvages Islands) in the North-east Atlantic being the host the majority of the world's population of this subspecies with only 50 pairs of breeding elsewhere.
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Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q845982. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1912, 1953 and 1842.
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This entry incorporates text from “White-faced storm petrel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.