The size of the tubular noses varies greatly. This includes the smallest seabirds - storm petrels (weight about 20-50 g) and the largest seabirds - albatrosses (weight about 8-12 kg). Three front toes are connected by a membrane, the fourth, back toe is underdeveloped. Due to their lifestyle, most tube-nosed beetles have long, narrow wings, allowing them to fly over the ocean without landing. Large species usually soar using the lifting force of the wind, small ones often flap their wings.
Most tubular noses spend a lot of time over the open sea and return to land only to nest. Distributed across all seas and oceans in all climatic zones. The most famous representatives of petrels are albatrosses and petrels .
Nutrition
They feed on tube-nosed fish , cephalopods , zooplankton , carrion , and some large species can attack live birds and destroy seabird nests.
Reproduction
Despite the fact that most of their lives pipe-nosed bears fly over the ocean, they breed on land. These are monogamous birds, laying as a rule, one, less often two eggs. An egg makes up 6 to 26% of the femaleβs weight. both parents incubate an egg from 38-45 days (storm petrels) to 80 days (albatrosses), which is twice as long as other birds of similar size and lifestyle. Hatched chicks also develop slowly. At the petrels, the chicks sit in the nests for up to two months. Albatrosses have four to nine months. In most tubular noses, adult birds feed their chicks no more than once a day, usually at night. Some petrels feed their chicks once every 3-4 nights. Shortly before the chicks learn to fly, adult birds stop feeding them. Since the chick-nosed chicks remain alone for a long period of time, they are forced to defend themselves against possible enemies. For this purpose, in their stomach (and in the stomach of adult birds), special glands produce a strongly smelling musk oily liquid of red, brown or yellow color. In case of danger, the chick spits this liquid for 1-1.5 m. With the same liquid, adult birds grease their plumage and feed it to newly hatched chicks. The smell of liquid is so persistent that it persists for a long time even on stuffed tubular noses.
The tube-nosed order consists of 2 suborders with 4 modern and 2 extinct families [4] :
- Suborder Procellarae
- Superfamily Procellarioidea
- Diomedeidae - Albatross
- Procellariidae - Petrel
- β Diomedeoididae
- β Tytthostonychidae
- Superfamily Oceanitoidea
- Hydrobatidae - Butterflies
- Suborder Pelecanoidi
- Pelecanoididae - Diving Petrels
