Class Aves Phylum Chordata Rank Species | ||
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Similar Puffinus, Heinroth's shearwater, Galápagos shearwater, Christmas shearwater, Bonin petrel | ||
The Bryan's shearwater (Puffinus bryani) is a species of shearwater that may occur around the Hawaiian Islands. It is the smallest species of shearwater and is black and white with a bluish gray beak and blue tarsi. First collected in 1963 and thought to be a little shearwater (Puffinus assimilis) it was determined using DNA analysis to be distinct in 2011. It is rare and possibly threatened and there is little information on its breeding or non-breeding ranges. It is named after Edwin Horace Bryan Jr. a former curator of the B. P. Bishop Museum at Honolulu.
On February 7, 2012, the DNA tests on six specimens found in Ogasawara alive and dead between 1997 and 2011 determined that they were Bryan's shearwaters. It is assumed that Bryan's shearwaters still survive in the uninhabited islands.
In 2015, it was found that a small breeding colony of Bryan's shearwaters existed on the island of Higashijima in Japan.
