By Liam Quinn [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Snowy Sheathbill Chionis albus

Status.

Category E

Native Range

Antarctic and South America. Breeds on the Antarctic Peninsula to 65°S and spends the non breeding period along the coasts of southern Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands.

Conservation Status

Least Concern

British Occurrence

NBN atlas has 0 records as at end 2024. Map Here.

One arrived in Plymouth with the return of the Falklands war task force "in the early 1980s"

Discover more about this bird with

Notes

This peculiar bird has been described thus "(it has) the general appearance, gait, and flight of a pigeon, with the beak and voice of a crow; with the habits of a wader, yet dreading the water, and with pugnacity and familiarity with man of a rasorial [gallinaceous] bird" (Kidder and Coues 1876)."