Four species of petrel breed in Reunion, two in the genus Puffinus and two in Pterodroma. A third gadflypetrel, Pterodroma arminjoniana, nests on Round Is., off Mauritius, and brings the total number of petrels nesting in the Mascarenes to five. Breeding stormpetrels (Hydrobatidae) are absent, and this is true for the Indian Ocean as a whole, where members of this family occur only on migration.

The two endemic gadfly-petrels, Pterodroma baraui and P. aterrima, were the subject of earlier papers (Jouanin 1963, Jouanin & Gill 1967, Jouanin 1970a) where I tried to bring together all information that was then known. It seems useful also to publish details of the two shearwaters, although they are common and widespread species, and to add some unpublished observations on the Pterodroma species made since my previous papers were published.

Wedge-tailed Shearwater Puffinus pacificus

The Wedge-tailed Shearwater is widely distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical parts of the Indo-Pacific region. The various described races are doubtfully tenable (Jouanin & Mougin 1979), although there are slight statistical differences in measurements (see Murphy 1951), and colour phases occur in more or less stable ratios in different areas; only the dark phase is known from the Western Indian Ocean.

Créoles who live up in the mountains in Réunion often report cries of nocturnal birds resembling babies crying. I have been given this information at Hellbourg and Dos d'Ane, and by A. S. Cheke (in litt., hereafter ‘ASC’) at St.-Joseph. Jadin & Billiet (1979) heard cries of this type at Pavilion, Petit Serré and from the road under the sea cliffs between St.-Denis and La Possession.