Southern Giant Petrel (juvenile)

The Southern Giant Petrel is a large predatory seabird of the southern oceans. Its distribution overlaps broadly with the similar southern giant petrel, though it overall is centred slightly further north. In this sequence, you can see a juvenile flying around about 10km's outside of Punta del Este.

Macronectes giganteus can be broken down as makros a Greek word meaning "long" or "large" and nēktēs meaning "swimmer", and "petrel" refers to Saint Peter and from the story of him walking on water, which refers to how they run on top of the water as they are getting airborne.

The Southern and Northern Giant Petrel were not established as separate species until 1966.

This petrel is the largest of the Procellariidae and measures 86–99 cm with a wingspan of 185–205 cm. The male weighs approximately 5 kg and the female 3–8 kg. They have a very large yellow bill, with a green tip and greyish-brown legs. As juveniles, the dark morph starts off more sooty brown and pales as it ages. Adults of the two species can be separated by the colour of their bill-tip: greenish in the southern and reddish in the northern.

They have a salt gland that is situated above the nasal passage and helps desalinate their bodies, due to the high amount of ocean water that they imbibe. It excretes a concentrated saline solution from their nostrils.