Feathered Ocean Mice

     Dovekies and Wilson's petrels are feathered mice on the vast, featureless North Atlantic Ocean, the former species during the northern winters and the petrels in the northern summer.  Dovekies are in the Alcid family of birds while the petrels are in the Hydrobalidae family.  The chunky dovekies are built like tiny penquins, but live and nest in the northern hemisphere, and are able to fly.  Wilson's petrels are light-bodied, have external, tubed nostrils and nest in the southern hemisphere.  Both species are pelagic when not raising young, six and a half to six and three-quarters inches long, have webbed feet but do not walk well, and each pair of each species lays one egg per year.
     Dovekies nest in large, noisy colonies, with each pair rearing its chick in a crevice between rocks at the foot of cliffs in northern Greenland, Iceland and North Atlantic islands.  Adult dovekies have a direct flight of whirring wing beats on short wings, are black on top and white below like penguins, and have stubby beaks.  They are active around their breeding colonies at night to avoid the predation of glaucous gulls, polar bears and Arctic foxes when they land to feed their chicks in their burrows.  Inuits catch many adult dovekies during the birds' breeding season.  They snare them in nets on long poles and process them for food.            
     In winter, dovekies are abundant on the lonely, seemingly endless North Atlantic Ocean.  There rafts of them bob on a habitat of ocean waves and slip under water to feed on tiny crustaceans.  They swim with their webbed feet on the surface, but power under water with their wings, as if flying under water, as penguins do.    
     Wilson's petrels are abundant in groups off the North Atlantic Coast during the northern summer, and are, sometimes, seen from shore.  It's thought by some ornithologists that this species is the most abundant bird on Earth.  This kind of petrel nests in crannies among loose rocks, under boulders and in cliffs on islands off the southern tip of South America and in the Antarctic Ocean, which completely circles Antarctica.
     Wilson's petrels are dark brown with white rumps and a light patch on the upper surface of each wing.  They have long legs with yellow, webbed feet.  They have a direct and gracefully gliding flight into the wind and low over the unending waves, which alternates with swallow-like wing beats.  When feeding on krill and other small crustaceans, plankton and tiny fish, petrels seem to dance on the waves with their wings raised into the wind for lift and long legs dangling and often touching the water.  Gulls and skuas, which are related to gulls, feed on some of the petrels.
     Though from different families of birds, dovekies and Wilson's petrels have characteristics in common because the habitat they share has shaped them to be what they are.  That process is called convergent evolution.  And for the same reason, the little dovekies of the northern hemisphere are somewhat similar to the penguins of the southern hemisphere.  And even if we never see dovekies and petrels, it's still neat to know they exist in mid-ocean habitats when not raising offspring.  These feathered mice are hardy in a tough habitat, which can be stirring to a person's imagination.