Never seen before in area.
Observation: Spotted this bird on the Yukon River near Grayling, found out it is a Fork-tailed Storm Petrel, never seen this in area before.
LEO says: "A small, gray, ocean-going bird of the North Pacific, the Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel (Oceanodroma furcata) is the only pure gray member of its family. Most of the other storm-petrels are predominantly black." The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (2015) "Open ocean. favors cold waters, foraging over continental shelf and farther out to sea, sometimes fairly close to land. Extends north into Bering Sea, and may even occur around edges of floating ice." Audobon (2016 "Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels are found only in the North Pacific Ocean and are most abundant in Alaska." USFWS (2006)
Note: This post has been forwarded to our partners at the U.S. Fishing Wildlife Service.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Consult: Thanks for sending this out. It is a rare observation, both because its so far north, and being inland. Glad you got the picture. Perhaps its related to the big storms that were in the Bering Sea area. I'll check with some of the true 'birders' in our office to see if they know of other similar records. Either way, I'm sure they'd like to make a note of this.
eBird Consult: Looks like you have the species' identification down right! In addition to checking my own field guides to compare with Bernice Nicholi’s photo of the Fork-tailed Storm-Pertrel, I also passed on her photo to Thede Tobish, who’s a member of the Alaska Checklist Committee. Thede responded with, “Strange photo but it looks like it. We do have records of fall birds up the large rivers like the Big Su, Kenai etc.” Thede’s comment about the photo being strange is because none of us have ever seen this species feeding on a large fish. We normally only see this species out in the open ocean. In addition to being a member of the Alaska Checklist Committee, Thede is the Alaska Editor for the American Birding Association’s magazine “North American Birds,” which is published quarterly and which contains records of bird rarities for Alaska and all the rest of North America. You should now try and get Bernice Nicholi to upload her observation information about this Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel to eBird and to upload her photograph with her observation. For people new to eBird, it’s a good idea to read over the instructions in the “Help” section of the eBird website before uploading data. Best regards and let me know if you have questions, Bob Winckler Alaska eBird Reviewer
Observations From Members