Northern fulmar

The northern fulmar was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1761 in the second edition of his book Fauna Svecica. He placed it with the other petrels in the genus Procellaria and coined the binomial name Procellaria glacialis. Linnaeus based his description mainly on the "Mallemucke" that had been described and illustrated in 1675 by the German naturalist Friderich Martens in his account of his voyage to Spitzbergen. The northern fulmar is now placed in the genus Fulmarus that was introduced in 1826 by the English naturalist James Stephens. The genus name comes from the Old Norse '''' meaning "foul-mew" or "foul-gull" because of the birds' habit of ejecting a foul-smelling oil. The specific epithet '''' is Latin for "icy". Three subspecies are recognised: • F. g. rodgersii Cassin, 1862 – breeds in the North Pacific on the coast of eastern Siberia (south to the Kuril Islands), Alaska, and (in very small numbers) in British Columbia south to Triangle Island; wintering south to Japan in the west and Baja California in the east. Tail contrastingly dark grey. ==Description==

, Germany , California The northern fulmar has a wingspan of ==Behaviour==

Feeding Northern fulmars will feed on shrimps, fish, squid, plankton, jellyfish, and carrion, as well as refuse. Their nest is a scrape on a grassy ledge or a saucer of vegetation on the ground, lined with softer material. The birds nest in large colonies. and fully fledges after 70 to 75 days. Again, both sexes are involved. During this period, the parents are nocturnal, and will even be inactive on well-lit nights. Social behaviour The mating ritual of this fulmar consists of the female resting on a ledge and the male landing with his bill open and his head back. He commences to wave his head side to side and up and down while calling. They make grunting and chuckling sounds while eating and guttural calls during the breeding season. ==Conservation==

The northern fulmar is estimated to have between 15,000,000 and 30,000,000 mature individuals that occupy an occurrence range of and their North American population is on the rise, hence it is listed with the IUCN as Least Concern. The range of these species increased greatly last century due to the availability of fish offal from commercial fleets, but may contract because of less food from this source and climatic change. The population increase has been especially notable in the British Isles. == Anthropogenic impact ==

Northern fulmars' stomach contents are a hallmark indicator of marine debris in marine environments because of their high abundance and wide distribution. A study of 143 northern fulmars from 2008 to 2013 found 89.5% of them containing microplastics within their gastrointestinal tracts. A mean score of 19.5 pieces of plastic and 0.461 g per individual was calculated. This is considerably higher than in past studies on northern fulmars, possibly implying increasing plastic debris in marine ecosystems and shorelines. However, more research is needed to substantiate such conclusion. Long-term data from the Netherlands dating back to the 1980s show an increase in consumer plastics and a decrease in industrial plastics in the stomach contents of fulmars. The increased plastic ingestion can occur through biomagnification: their diet consists of such invertebrates like plankton that have shown an increase of consumption of microplastics entering the ocean. By going deeper into the food web of marine life, it is evident that fulmars could be indirectly affected through tropic transfer and biomagnification, and similarly could also affect their predators ingestion of plastic pollution. With the increase in freshwater pollution of plastic debris, there may be a further rise in microplastic content of seabird gastrointestinal tracts. == Legend ==

A popular story among the central Inuit, for instance, is that of their race-mother Sedna, who was the daughter of a chief, and was wooed by a fulmar who promised her, if she would marry him, a delightful life in his distant home. So she went away with him. But she had been ruefully deceived, and was cruelly mistreated. A year later her father went to pay her a visit; and discovering her misery he killed her husband and took his repentant daughter home. The other fulmars in the village followed them, mourning and crying for their murdered fellow, and fulmars continue to utter doleful cries to this day. ==References==