Hutton's Shearwater

The bird's name commemorates Frederick Hutton, a former curator of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand. A medium-sized (350 g) seabird, with a 75 cm wingspan, it is brown with a white underbelly and brown collar, dark borders to the underwing, dark grey bill, and pinkish dark-webbed feet. It can be distinguished from the fluttering shearwater by its dark grey "armpits". At a breeding colony it has a loud cackling call.

These birds live entirely at sea except when breeding. During the September–March (spring and summer) breeding season, adults migrate to New Zealand waters. There have been individual sightings around the entire New Zealand coast, but most birds feed off the eastern South Island, especially between Cook Strait and Banks Peninsula. Large flocks can be seen off the Kaikōura coast during summer. Outside the breeding season, they are mostly found in Australian waters. Geo-locators fitted on young birds revealed that some circumnavigate Australia in an anti-clockwise direction in the 4–5 years leading up to sexual maturity.

Hutton's shearwater feeds in the open ocean largely on small fish and krill, diving up to 20 m. Puffinus huttoni have long bills, which are adapted to catch prey more or less underwater by plunging from a few metres above the surface or by paddling slowly forwards searching with their head submerged, then diving using partly opened wings for propulsion.