Black-capped Petrel
Pterodroma hasitata (Kuhl, 1820) (1, 0)
Photo © By Patrick Coin (Patrick Coin) - Photograph taken by Patrick Coin, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2321274
STATUS
Oceanic. Monotypic.
OVERVIEW
In a review of all seabirds by W. R. P. Bourne (Ibis 109: 141-167) the BOU (1971) under 'Introduction' p. xiv, adopted his recommendations for this species and accepted this record.
RECORD
1). 1850 Norfolk Southacre, Swaffham, caught on a heath, March or April, now at Castle Museum, Norwich (Acc. No. NWHCM: 1949.108).
(A. Newton, Zoologist 1852: 3691-98; Yarrell, 1856; Yarrell, 1871-85; Southwell, 1890; Witherby, 1920-24; W. R. P. Bourne, Ibis 109: 155; Seago, 1977; Dye, Fiszer & Allard, 2009).
History Alfred Newton of Elveden (1852) in The Zoologist, 1st series, Vol. X. pp. 3691-98, says: 'The bird represented in the engraving at page 3693, was observed by a boy on a heath at Southacre, near Swaffham in Norfolk, flapping for some time from one furze-bush to another; at length it got into one of the bushes, and was then secured by him: exhausted as it was, it had strength enough remaining to bite violently the hand of its captor, who thereupon billed it. Mr. Newcome, of Hockwold Hall, near Brandon, fortunately happened at the time to be hawking in the neighbourhood of Swaffham, and his falconer, John Madden, observing the boy with the dead bird, procured it from him and brought it to his master, by whom it was skinned and mounted, and in whose possession it now is. This took place in March or April, 1850.
In my ignorance of the appearance of the Fulmar in its immature stage of plumage, and my unwillingness to consider that a wonder had been met with, I considered the subject of this paper to be a specimen of the young of that bird; but happening shortly after to see an individual of that species, I at once perceived the error I had fallen into, but by that time the bird had been enclosed in a case with others, and Mr. Newcome was unwilling to take it out in order to submit it to the inspection of competent judges.
However, in May last, that gentleman was prevailed upon to send it to Mr. Yarrell, who not only at once saw that it was new to the British Fauna, but was unable to identify it with any described species. Mr. Gould, also, who inspected it at Mr. Yarrell's house, was equally undecided as to whether or not it had been described, but recognized it as a species he had seen on the wing in crossing the Atlantic. Being in London in July last, I thought I discovered a strong likeness between a stuffed specimen then in the Museum of the Zoological Society and Mr. Newcome's bird, on my return into Suffolk, therefore, I obtained this latter individual, and forwarded a sketch of it to Mr. Bartlett, accompanied by a request that he would inform me whether the two examples appeared to him to belong to the same species.
After some delay, arising from the fact that in the interval the specimen I had noticed had been transferred by the Zoological Society to the British Museum, Mr. Bartlett, on the 7th of September, returned me an answer in the affirmative; further stating that the species had been figured in No. 416 of the Planches Coloriées, under the name of Procellaria hasitata; and also, what appeared to him rather singular (for I had acquainted him with Mr. Gould's opinion), that Mr. Gould himself had described the identical specimen, in a paper read before the Society, as Procellaria rubritarsi, but that no reference to this paper could be found in the Society's published Proceedings.
Mr. Yarrell, a few days after, announced to me that he had independently made the same discovery, telling me that in the letter-press to the Planches Coloriées two specimens are referred to, one, the subject of the portrait, which was captured in the South Seas, the other, in the Museum of the Netherlands, which came from the Indian Ocean. Mr. Yarrell also further said, that the specimen now in the British Museum had been presented to the Zoological Society by the late John Hearne, Esq., and came from Hayti, that its wooden block-stand was marked 'rubritarsi', and that its tarsi were painted red. Having thus got upon the right track, I wrote to Mr. Gould, and the following extracts from his letters in answer to my inquiries, will be, I am sure, read with interest, as affording us the means of conjecturing the range of this species.
Mr. Gould says: "The petrel you write about is the same as that to which I gave the name of rubritarsi, but as that name was never published, of course no notice can be taken of it. I saw your bird in abundance off the Western Islands, and I have little doubt but that it breeds and finds a home in the West Indies, as I have seen specimens in France stated to have been brought from thence, besides which, Mr. Hearne's bird in the Museum of the Zoological Society was from Hayti, I have never seen it from the Indian Seas, and I think Temminck must have been misinformed as to that being its native locality".
The name rubritarsi was doubtless proposed under the belief that the red paint on Mr. Hearne's specimen was intended to represent the natural colouring; but my opinion, after having seen so many of the petrels alive, now is that they were flesh-colour. The following is a description of the individual bird whose capture in Norfolk I have above described. The whole of the beak is black: from the crown of the head to the nape of the neck the feathers are white at the base, broadly tipped with dark brown, so as to present, except at the edges of the patch, which is nearly circular, a uniform surface of the latter colour, in front of and below the eye are a few greyish black feathers extending over the ear-coverts; the orbits are surrounded with a ring of sepia-brown feathers. The forehead, face, neck, breast, belly, sides, and under tail-coverts are nearly pure white (the departure from that colour being probably only occasioned by the stain of the oil ejected by birds of this genus when captured), but there are also a few dark feathers on the flanks. The back and shoulders are covered with brownish grey and blackish brown feathers, the former appearing to have been but lately assumed, but many of the latter are 'sedgy' and worn at the edges; all these feathers are white at the base, but that colour does not show on the surface. The rump and upper tail-coverts are white, the feathers of the latter elongated. The tail is rounded, and consists of twelve feathers, the outer pair white, edged and broadly tipped with blackish brown, the next four pair are similarly coloured, but only slightly edged, the tips of each pair being darker as they approach the middle, the shafts of the quills in all, these are white; the middle pair of quills are brownish black nearly all their length, their basal part being white, and have their shafts corresponding in colour to their webs. The wing-coverts are blackish brown, bordered with a lighter shade of that colour, the borders of the middle and lower coverts being so broad as to appear like two light-coloured bars across the wing, the quill-feathers are blackish brown, with shafts of the same colour, the first quill-feather being the longest; the under surface of the wings, as far as can be ascertained, is white. The naked parts of the tibiae, the tarsi, and the basal halves of the toes and interdigital membranes appear to have been dusky yellow, the rest of the feet and the claws are black.
Mr. Newcome tells me that this specimen was a female, and that when fresh killed its irides were deep brown or hazel colour. The bird having been stuffed, it is difficult to ascertain some of its dimensions. Mr. Gurney, who took considerable pains to measure correctly its whole length, informed me that it must have been about 16 inches. Some of the measurements, which may be taken as certain, are these: Length of the ulna about 4¼ inches; from the carpal joint to the end of the longest wing-feather is rather more than 12 inches. The length of the naked portion of the tibia is rather more than half an inch; of the tarsus rather less than 1½ inch; and of the middle toe, excluding the claw, about 1¾ inch. The form and proportions of the beak are well shown in the full-size engraving of the head of the bird on the preceding page, and which also accurately exhibits its peculiar expression, principally caused by the singular prominent forehead, so unlike that of any other members of the petrel family with which I am acquainted.
This, Mr. Newcome assures me, was very conspicuous in the bird before it was skinned, and that in fact it has almost exactly the same cast of countenance now as when recently dead. Mr. George Robert Gray, to whom I sent the drawings from which the engravings illustrating this paper were taken, with a request that he would inform me whether they represented the bird as differing from the specimen which belonged to the Zoological Society, or from the figure in the Planches Coloriées, tells me that "the crest is not exhibited in Temminck's figure, nor in the specimen. There is less black on the top of the head in the figure than is given in your drawing, which causes one to suppose that the figure was taken from a more adult example. The specimen from the Society also differs from the drawing sent the black on the forehead advances to the base of the nostrils, and the black on the hind head extends further down the nape. These variations may prove that the Museum's specimen is rather younger than the example taken in Norfolk. In all other respects they agree".
Mr. Yarrell considers Mr. Newcome's bird as decidedly adult. The species under consideration is without doubt comprehended in the genus Procellaria, as at present restricted by most ornithologists. In the general appearance of its plumage it is, however, not unlike adult specimens of our Greater Shearwater (Puffinus major, Faber), and it is, I think, within the range of possibility, that it might have been mistaken by a hurried observer for that bird. I need hardly say that a moment's consideration of the generic differences of the two species would be enough to dispel any doubt that might arise on the subject....With regard to the specific name by which this petrel should be distinguished, Mr. G. R. Gray has expressed to me his opinion that it is the species to which that of haesitata (being the corrected form of hasitata applied to it by Dr. Kuhl in the year 1820) rightly belongs; for although Dr. Kuhl imagined, as did M. Temmink in the extract I have before quoted, that he was describing the subject of Forster's drawing, No. 97, he in reality has given the characteristics of a bird similar to the subject of this paper: and as the names on Forster's drawings were not published until 1844, Dr. Kuhl's is the earliest publication of the name. If from the single example whose capture is here recorded, the Procellaria hasitata of Kuhl is to be included in the list of British birds, it is evident that it must have an English appellation.
The ordinary rule that the scientific one should be literally translated, cannot, I think, be applied in this case, nor will it do to take the hint afforded in the French name applied by M. Temminck, and coin a meaningless word for the occasion. I should be inclined to call the bird the 'Capped Petrel', were it not that it appears, as far as can be ascertained from the two specimens, and the representation of a third, which has been compared on this occasion, that as the bird increases in age, the 'cap' grows less, and in very old specimens may entirely disappear; if, however, the 'cap' be permanent, I do not think the name would be inappropriate.
I ought perhaps, before this time, to have rendered my acknowledgements, in a more systematic manner than I have hitherto done, to those distinguished naturalists who have assisted me in drawing up this paper; for I fear that its great length may perhaps tire some of its readers before they find out that I am quite aware that little if any of the merit it may possess is due to me; but to interrupt, by any expressions which might be deferred, a narrative, as it is already too obscure, is not the way to make it clearer. Nothing that I can say can add to the reputation which those gentlemen now possess, but I am bound to return my very best thanks to Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Gould, Mr. G. R. Gray, Mr. Gurney, and Mr. Yarrell, for the kind and able manner in which they have guided me through (to use the happy expression of the latter author) 'a field of search which is almost as wide as the range of the petrels themselves.' Last, though not least, my thanks are due to my friend Mr. Newcome, who placed the bird in my hands for the purpose of, describing it here.
Time will show what manner of an addition to British Ornithology Procellaria hasitata may be: whether a storm-driven straggler (as probably Mr. Newcome's specimen was); or one of those visitants to which, in our ignorance of the causes of their wandering, we apply the name of "accidental"; or again, a species of rare but periodical occurrence: and considering its Atlantic range, and the possibility of its being taken for a British bird, the appearance of which is by no means generally well known, this last does not seem to me improbable. But the subject once mentioned in The Zoologist, may safely be left in the hands of its readers; and imperfect as I know this paper to be, I only trust it may excite them still more to pay attention to these interesting works of creation, which are to be found even if we "take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea".'
Admitted by Saunders (1884-85 (4): 8-9, 4th ed.) in Yarrell's British Birds, Southwell, Editor (1890 (3): 361-364) in Stevenson's Birds of Norfolk and (Witherby 1920-24).
Palmer (2000) adds: 'The specimen is in the Castle Museum, Norwich.' A. G. Irwin of Norwich Castle Museum (per. comms.) adds: 'Acquired (and mounted) by Mr. E. C. Newcome of Feltwell Hall. Presented to the Museum by Lt. Col. T. S. N. Hardinge (also of Feltwell Hall) on 1st June 1949. Apparently the bird was remounted some time between 1852 and 1865.'
