Characteristics and living habits of seabirds

The sky above the ocean is not lonely either. There are more than 8,000 species of birds that soar over the ocean and obtain food from the ocean, accounting for about 30% of the world's known bird species. Although they need to build nests on land to incubate eggs and raise their young, they spend most of their lives on or flying across the ocean.

Seagulls flying over the sea

When people think of seabirds, they often think of seagulls, petrels and albatrosses. In fact, there are many types of seabirds. People are used to dividing seabirds into two major categories: one is called oceanic seabirds, such as albatrosses, which live over the ocean far away from the continent and can not land for several years except during the breeding season; the other is Coastal seabirds, such as gulls and frigatebirds, go out to sea to forage during the day and return to land to spend the night at night.

Birds on Bird Island

Albatrosses and petrels are typical ocean birds. They have large bodies and long wings. One of them, the Wanderer's Albatross, has wings spread over 3.6 meters long. Rain or shine, they fly over the ocean all day long. In the sea and sky at night with thunder and lightning, you can often catch a glimpse of their scurrying figures. The frigatebird with its red neck pouch is a typical inhabitant of coastal and bay waters. Seagulls are the most common marine birds. Their calls sound like cats. Fishermen in northern my country call them seagulls. In order to forage for food, seagulls often accompany warships and ships at sea, looking for fish and shrimps knocked unconscious by propellers at the stern of the ship. When the seafarers are having their meals, no matter they are sailing or anchored in the harbor, a large number of seagulls will come on time and compete for the leftovers discarded by the seafarers, adding a lot of fun to the lonely sea life of the seafarers. Seagulls are seafarers' good friends. Seafarers do not harm seagulls, and seagulls also trust seafarers. Some desert islands have been home to thousands of seabirds for thousands of years, flying up to block out the sky and the sun, leaving behind a layer of guano as hard as stone over time. For example: the guano layer on some islands in Nansha and Xisha in my country is several meters to tens of meters thick, making it an excellent organophosphorus fertilizer. Penguins are also marine birds. However, penguins' flight abilities have deteriorated. However, penguins can use their dexterous and powerful short wings to swim quickly in the cold water.

A flock of birds perching on the coast

Seabirds have superb diving skills. Most of them can dive to more than ten meters to hundreds of meters. The boobies can fold their wings from an altitude of more than 100 meters, like a fired cannonball, drill into the sea, dive for tens of meters, and then dive back again. Come to the surface. In order to prevent seawater from pouring into the nostrils during diving, the noses of these seabirds have lost the external nostrils after long-term evolution. The diving champion among seabirds is the penguin in Antarctica, which can dive to more than 270 meters of water. Seabirds also have the habit of migration. For example, Wilson's petrels breed on islands in the Antarctic waters and fly more than 10,000 nautical miles north to Labrador to spend the summer, and then return when the southern hemisphere summer comes. The navigation and orientation ability of seabirds is still a scientific mystery.

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