Mullarney, Arnoud van den Berg, Mark Con- 
stantine, Rene Pop, and others — also pro- 
vides a wealth of information on tubenose 
identification, albeit largely by vocalizations 
heard only on the breeding grounds. 
Birders who have become enchanted with 
this group will be interested in spending 
quality time with the book, not least because 
it advances the proposals for numerous splits 
in “species” that we have only recently come 
to feel comfortable identifying at sea in North 
America. Among many other effects of this 
book is to erase this sense of comfort — ^which 
permits us to look at these seabirds with 
fresh eyes, open minds, and ready cameras. 
Some of these proposed splits have become 
rather settled on European shores, for in- 
stance, the recognition of Yelkouan Shearwa- 
ter (Puffinus yelkouan) and Balearic Shearwa- 
ter (P mauretanicus) as distinct species in the 
“Mediterranean Shearwater” group. Howev- 
er, for many readers, some of the splits pro- 
posed are essentially new with the publica- 
tion of this book. European bird records 
committees have not fully reviewed these 
proposals, though the Dutch committee has 
ratified several; some of them have only re- 
cently been proposed formally in the scien- 
tific literature, and others have yet to be de- 
scribed in the literature. 
In the Petrels book, among the larger 
tubenoses, what our field guides call Cory’s 
Shearwater is split three ways: into Cape 
Verde Shearwater (C. edwardsii) of the Cape 
Verde Islands, Cory’s Shearwater (C. borealis) 
of Macaronesian islands, south to the Canary 
Islands (with a small colony in Spain’s Ter- 
reros Islands in the Mediterranean), and 
Scopoli’s Shearwater (C. diomedea) of the 
Mediterranean (and a site on the Atlantic 
coast of France), the latter named for the 
Austrian-ltalian doctor Giovanni Antonio 
Scopoli, who described the Mediterranean- 
nesting birds in 1769. All three have been 
confirmed in North American waters, vAth 
borealis by far the most numerous, as would 
be expected, as its nesting islands are closest 
to North American waters. Although dio- 
medea is known from multiple specimens in 
North America, field identification is very 
difficult without excellent comparative stud- 
ies (and photographs) of Scopoli’s with 
Cory’s and may not be possible in many cas- 
es (see also Howell and Patteson. 2008. 
Variation in Cory’s and Scopoli’s Shearwaters. 
Alula 14: 12-21). 
Little Shearwater in the North Atlantic is 
split into Boyd’s Shearwater (Puffinis boydi) 
of the Cape Verde Islands, which has not 
been documented in the western North At- 
lantic, and Barolo’s Shearwater (P. baroli), 
which nests in Macaronesia from the Canary 
Islands northward. (In North American Birds 
61: 205, we misspelled this species’ potential 
English name, which honors the Italian Car- 
lo Tancredi Falletti, Marchese di Barolo, born 
in 1782, and/or his French wife Juliette Vic- 
turine Colbert di Maulevrier, born in 1786. 
Because a noble estate is marked with “di 
Barolo,” the name Barolo Shearwater would 
be preferable.) The taxon baroli is the one as- 
sociated with the recent Massachusetts 
record (North American Birds 62: 190) and 
the Sable Island, Nova Scotia specimen from 
September 1896. Although these two can 
look similar, a much greater difficulty lies in 
distinguishing Boyd’s from Audubon’s Shear- 
water (P Iherminieri) , which is regrettably 
not treated in the book. 
The bird we in North America now call 
Fea’s Petrel (Pterodroma feae) , recognized by 
the early 1990s as specifically distinct from 
the smaller Zino’s Petrel (R madeira) of 
Madeira, is further split into Desertas Petrel 
(R deserta) of Bugio Island (near Madeira, in 
the Desertas Islands) and the little-studied 
Fea’s Petrel proper (P. feae) of the Cape Verde 
Islands. The gadfly petrels captured in the 
Azores thus far appear most similar to Deser- 
tas Petrels. If the debate over the field identi- 
fication of Fea’s and Zino’s Petrels has not 
been sufficiently invigorating for the gentle 
reader, then the Fea’s vs. Desertas discussion 
should provide even more opportunity for 
spirited exchanges, hopefully ones that are 
based firmly on birds of known identity. At 
this point, it is not clear that feae and deserta 
are distinguishable in the field. Because we 
have no specimen of any petrel of this group 
for North America, it is unclear precisely 
which ones have occurred off our Atlantic 
coasts May through September; however, 
when asked to speculate (after some fine 
Barolo wine), those most familiar with these 
taxa now opine that the majority of records 
may refer not to the very heavy-billed Deser- 
tas Petrel but rather to the more numerous, 
slightly smaller-billed Fea's Petrel (cf. Binding 
36: 592). The daintier-billed Zino's Petrel has 
not been clearly documented in North Amer- 
ica, but images of interest have been pub- 
lished (see North American Birds 59: 527 and 
61: 672 and Binding 36: 593; see also a North 
Carolina record from September 1995 at 
<www.seabirding.com>). 
Band-rumped Storm-Petrel (Oceanodroma 
castro), long considered ripe for splitting by 
many ornithologists, is divided into four 
EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK 
North Atlantic species in the Petrels book, 
which does not hyphenate “storm-petrel,” as 
we do in North America. The proposed 
names for these four species, with hyphens, 
are: Madeiran Storm-Petrel (0. castro), Cape 
Verde Storm-Petrel (0. jabejabe), Grant’s 
Storm-Petrel, and Monteiro’s Storm-Petrel. 
The latter two were not given scientific names 
in the book; their proposed English names 
honor twentieth-century ornithologists Peter 
Grant and Luis Monteiro. Grant’s breeds in 
the Azores, Berlengas, Selvagens, Canary Is- 
lands, and Madeiran archipelago in the cool 
season (August through March); Monteiro’s 
breeds in the Azores during the warm season 
(March through September); Madeiran breeds 
in the Madeiran archipelago and Selvagens, 
with a few in the Canary Islands, in the warm 
season (late March through October); and 
Cape Verde breeds in the Cape Verde Islands 
in the cool season (October through June). 
Late in 2008, after the publication of Petrels, 
Monteiro’s Storm-Petrel was formally de- 
scribed by Mark Bolton and colleagues as 
Oceanodroma monteiroi (Ibis 150: 717-727). 
Grant’s has not yet been described. 
Observers off North Carolina have been 
carefully studying structure and molt pat- 
terns and timing of the “Band-rumped” 
storm-petrels seen there. May through early 
September, for the past several seasons (see 
Howell. 2008. Great expectations? Binding 
41: 50-52). The observations have generated 
much speculation on the taxa involved, but 
these should be taken as provisional and 
possibly not correct. Grant’s appears to be 
the predominant large “Band-rumped”-type 
here; it recalls Leach’s in size but usually 
lacks any semblance of fork or notch in the 
tail. Cape Verde, another cool-season breed- 
er, could also be present, although it is not 
clear at present whether it can be distin- 
guished from Grant’s when seen at sea. Mon- 
teiro’s may also occur — the few birds ob- 
served with distinctly forked tails may be 
this taxon. And Madeiran Storm-Petrels may 
also occur; the very smallest “Band- 
rumpeds,” which can sometimes be passed 
off for Wilson’s Storm-Petrels (Oceanites 
oceanicus), may in fact be Madeirans — small 
birds have occasioned more than a little con- 
fusion and disagreement on pelagic trips 
over the years (we managed to get these two 
dissimilar species reversed in a recent cap- 
tion: Figure 11 on page 517 of the previous 
issue!). These taxa apparently also differ in 
several other features of plumage, but these 
require further study of breeding birds. The 
North American specimen record of Band- 
VOIUME 62 (2009) • NUMBER 4 
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