Puffinus yelkouan
Silhouette: Juan Carlos Jerí · PhyloPic
In 3 days ~20% in a week ~40%
The yelkouan shearwater, Levantine shearwater or Mediterranean shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus).
The yelkouan shearwater was formally described in 1827 by the Italian naturalist Giuseppe Acerbi from specimens collected in the Bosphorus, Turkey. He placed the shearwater in the genus Procellaria and coined the binomial name Procellaria yelkouan. The yelkouan shearwater is now placed in the genus Puffinus was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The genus name Puffinus is Neo-Latin based on the English "puffin". The specific yelkouan is the Turkish word "wind chaser" for a shearwater. The yelkouan shearwater is considered to be monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
It was formerly considered a subspecies of the Manx shearwater. After the first split, it was the nominate subspecies of the so-called "Mediterranean shearwater" for nearly ten more years; it is considered a monotypic species now, as the Balearic form mauretanicus has been separated as the Balearic shearwater.
A molecular phylogenetic... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Camargue | 🇫🇷 France |
More parks will be added in future updates.
No species of the same family or order lives in Istanbul, so these are its closest relatives here: other birds.
With luck
About 10% of wildlife watchers report a Yelkouan Shearwater sighting in Istanbul on a given day, based on 504 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data. It is the 71st most-seen of the 233 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to about 20%, and over a week to about 40%, if each day is a fresh chance.
February–July and October–December
In those months about 10% of wildlife watchers report a Yelkouan Shearwater in Istanbul on a given day, against under 5% in January and August–September, the lowest months.
Between 8 and 11 am
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Yelkouan Shearwater sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Yes
Of the 5 cities where we can rate Yelkouan Shearwater sightings, Istanbul has the highest daily chance: about 10%. Next come Tel Aviv (Israel, under 5%) and Athens (Greece, under 5%).
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Yelkouan Shearwater is recorded against all the birds logged in Istanbul (504 verified sightings), calibrated against known sighting rates. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10% because citizen-science data supports honest approximations, not decimals, and months with records from fewer than five people show "—". How it works.
