Appearance:

Largest rail in VP. Clearly bigger than coot, and almost twice the size of Moorhen. Generally unmistakable with its dark, violet blue plumage, long, robust legs and heavy bill. Under tail coverts white. Red frontal shield and bill, pinkish red legs. Immature birds with duller coloured legs, duller plumage and faintly greyish/whitish underparts. Trailing legs obvious in flight. Swims readily.

Sound:

Rich repertiore and very vocal. Sounds range from soft, mewing and laughing to hard, extremely shrill trills. Generally louder, and shriller than congeners. Often merges into, or starts with diagnostic, extremely hard trill "krrrrriiit".

Contact calls:

Distribution:

Xeno-canto: map

Ecology:

Birdlife ecology

Links:

Observation.org Latest observations

Video IBC

Image search Flickr NB! May give other species

Sound search at Xeno-canto

Featherbase

CC

Appearance:

Dark-bellied, long-billed shearwater with small head and elongated body. Wings long, narrow and pointed, with pale patches/bands underneath framed in dark base colour of body. Flight fast and powerful. In strong winds hand held pointing slightly backwards. The pale underwing is clearly visible in good light, but the whole bird often seems completely dark. Only shearwater in the region with completely dark underparts, except from dark individuals of the much smaller, and short-winged, Balearic Shearwater. The latter also shows deeper belly and less deep chest. At long distance, and/or bad weather, Sooty Shearwater may be confused with Arctic Skua or even young Gannets. Differs from Gannets by size, shorter neck and no white rump patch. Told from Skuas by bursting series of stiff wing-beats with alternating glides.

Sound:

Mostly heard at breeding ground. A peculiar, rhythmic, coarse moaning, with a disyllabic attack, followed by a deeper, cooing "in-breath".

Song:

Distribution:

Wikipedia: map (se also Xeno-canto below)

Ecology:

Birdlife ecology

Links:

Observation.org Latest observations

Video IBC

Image search Flickr NB! May give other species

Sound search at Xeno-canto

CC

CC-photo:pablo_caceres_c, Licence,Link.

CC-photo:Jon. D. Anderson, Licence,Link.

Sounds:Creative Commons,www.xeno-canto.org,sjonnoh,http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/