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Fea's and Zinos' Petrels



Greetings to all,

This message is for anyone who has pelagic interests. Next week I am off to 
Madeira to (hopefully) see and photograph both Fea's and Zino's Petrels in 
the wild - to try to settle once and for all, the confusion left by the ABA 
Records Committee in their equivocal decision regarding what we see here. 
For those of us (me, Brian Patteson, Harry LeGrand, etc.) who have been 
seeing these birds off Hatteras, there is no doubt that they are Fea's and 
not Zino's Petrels. However, the ABA Committee took a more cautious approach 
(putting it mildly) and accepted the birds as "Fea's/Zino's" Petrel. Their 
justification was that "nobody" could demonstrate by direct field marks that 
the birds were absolutely one and not the other, and that even the Zinos 
(Alec and Frank) had stated that they could not tell one from the other. 
They even sniped at me because I had not seen both in the wild. I have some 
rather compelling evidence that not only ARE the two identifiable in the 
field, it might be rather easy to tell one from the other, even in the 
absence of a direct comparison (which is my ultimate goal over there).

I'll update everyone on the success (or failure) of this little research 
project on my return. In the mean time, wish me luck.

Mike Tove
mtove@insureain.com
Cary, NC