Pachyptila desolata
Silhouette: Alexandre Vong · PhyloPic
In 3 days <5%
The Antarctic prion (Pachyptila desolata) also known as the dove prion, or totorore in Māori, is the largest of the prions, a genus of small petrels of the Southern Ocean. The Antarctic prion was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the other petrels in the genus Procellaria and coined the binomial name Procellaria desolata. Gmelin based his description on the "brown-banded petrel" that had been described in 1785 by the English ornithologist John Latham from a specimen supplied by the naturalist Joseph Banks that had been collected on the "Isle of Desolation", now the Kerguelen Islands. The Antarctic prion is now one of seven prions placed in the genus Pachyptila that was introduced in 1811 by the German zoologist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek pakhus meaning "dense" or "thick" with ptilon meaning "feather" or "plumage". The specific epithet desolata is from Latin desolatus meaning "forsaken" or "desolated". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.
Prions are members of the family Procellariidae... Wikipedia →
| # | Park | Country | Daily sighting probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Table Mountain National Park | 🇿🇦 South Africa |
More parks will be added in future updates.
Rare
Under 5% of wildlife watchers report an Antarctic Prion sighting in Table Mountain National Park on a given day, based on 13 verified sightings from GBIF citizen-science data from 2019 to 2026. It is the 196th most-seen of the 223 birds we can rate there. Over three days the chance rises to under 5%, if each day is a fresh chance.
Any time of year
In every month with enough records, under 5% of wildlife watchers report an Antarctic Prion in Table Mountain National Park on a given day, so our monthly data shows no clear season.
Between 2 and 5 pm
Across all the parks we cover, that three-hour window holds the most Antarctic Prion sightings with a recorded time, and about 9 in 10 of them come between 6 am and 6 pm: it is a daytime animal.
Only Table Mountain National Park, in our data
Table Mountain National Park is the only park on Wallace's Line with enough records to rate Antarctic Prion sightings: under 5% of wildlife watchers there report one on a given day.
GBIF citizen-science records
It is estimated from how often the Antarctic Prion is recorded against all the birds logged in Table Mountain National Park (13 verified sightings from 2019 to 2026), 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.
