Figure 3. Presumed Magnificent Petrel Pterodroma (brevipes) magnificens, between Malekula and Espiritu Santo Islands, and Pentecost and Maewo Islands, Vanuatu, 24 April 2014 (Kirk Zufelt). Rather distant when photographed, this is the palest bird of 60 seen in these waters in April 2014 and January 2017. This individual is a shade lighter than the palest Magnificent Petrel in Bretagnolle & Shirihai (2010: 294, Fig. 8). Bretagnolle & Shirihai stated that the bird in their Fig. 8 was borderline between 'dark grey' and 'smoky', thus we label this bird 'smoky'. Bretagnolle & Shirihai (2010: 291, Table 2) scored Magnificent Petrels at sea off Banks Islands, Vanuatu, and found that 10.53% were smoky (the rest extreme / dark grey); they scored the type series from the same waters and found 20% were smoky (the rest extreme / dark grey).

Published as part of Flood, Robert L., Wilson, Angus C. & Zufelt, Kirk, 2017, Observations of five litle-known tubenoses from Melanesia in January 2017, pp. 226-236 in Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 137 (3) on page 231, DOI: 10.25226/bboc.v137i3.2017.a7, http://zenodo.org/record/11558495