How to Use petrel in a Sentence

petrel

noun
Definition of petrelnext
  • Its foe, a burly male southern giant petrel, isn’t there for the egg.
    — Jake Buehler, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 July 2021
  • This high-altitude realm is the nesting site for Zino’s petrel, one of the rarest birds in the world.
    — National Geographic, 10 Jan. 2020
  • With a lunge, the petrel bites the albatross around the neck, dragging it off into the bushes.
    — Jake Buehler, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 July 2021
  • These areas are renowned for hosting two of the world’s largest Antarctic petrel colonies.
    — Melissa Breyer, Treehugger, 13 Mar. 2023
  • The island is a nesting site for rare species of petrels, shearwaters and terns.
    — Evan Halper, latimes.com, 18 Sep. 2017
  • Observers from Manomet Point saw two Northern fulmars and a Leach’s storm-petrel.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 14 Oct. 2019
  • Seabirds that are strong flyers; gulls, shearwaters, petrels, and jaegers; will usually exit the storm first.
    — Taylor Piephoff, charlotteobserver, 22 Sep. 2017
  • The grey petrel, which had not bred on Macquarie for more than a century, began to do so the year the island's program was completed.
    — Simon Willis, Travel + Leisure, 14 Dec. 2021
  • The increase in owls coincided with a major uptick in the number of petrel carcasses.
    — Peter Fimrite, SFChronicle.com, 7 Oct. 2019
  • Pigeons, petrels, honeybees and possibly bears and mice use odor maps of their neighborhoods to return to den sites or nests.
    — Michael Engelhard, Alaska Dispatch News, 1 July 2017
  • Take the Cory's shearwater, an oceangoing petrel species that migrates over the Atlantic every year.
    — Jason G. Goldman, Scientific American, 1 May 2020
  • But when the mouse population crashes in the winter, the owls prey on the ashy storm-petrel, whose population on the islands — where half the world’s storm petrels nest — has been declining since the ’90s.
    — Laura Newberry, latimes.com, 7 July 2019
  • Tropic birds, shearwaters, petrels, terns, boobies, and other birds of the open ocean roost and forage on sargassum mats.
    — David Doubilet, National Geographic, 12 June 2019
  • The islands boast one of the world’s largest breeding colonies for seabirds, including the rare ashy storm-petrel, whose population — half of which lives on the Farallones — has declined in recent decades.
    — Rosanna Xia, latimes.com, 10 July 2019
  • The rats—brought to the island by whalers and sealers as early as the late 18th century—ate the eggs and vulnerable chicks of seabirds, including albatrosses, skua, terns, and petrels.
    — National Geographic, 9 May 2018
  • But shearwaters, as well as petrels and albatrosses, are part of a class known as tube-nosed seabirds, with tubular nostrils and an excellent senses of smell.
    — Matthew Savoca, The Conversation, 21 Mar. 2023
  • There has been early storm-petrel sightings in Boston Harbor along with strong plankton bloom and attendant tubenoses located south and east of Cape Cod.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 7 July 2019
  • After the petrel (or drone) dies, information about its feeding habits is preserved for hundreds or thousands of years inside its bones.
    — Wendy Mitman Clarke, Smithsonian, 26 Apr. 2017
  • Slater, who was actually on a mission to locate the Hawaiian petrel, another endangered seabird, was able to pick up the scent for another rare species of seabird.
    — Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 9 Dec. 2022
  • Other petrels, meanwhile, typically must hunt while flying or swimming in the ocean.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Feb. 2023
  • While penguins may look profoundly different from other birds, their DNA points to a close kinship to such species as albatrosses and petrels.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 12 Dec. 2017
  • Getting rid of the mice, which are the last remaining nonnative mammals on the islands, would reduce owl predation enough for the petrel population to stabilize and maybe even grow, the study said.
    — Peter Fimrite, SFChronicle.com, 7 Oct. 2019
  • Registered guests are trained to rescue juvenile puffins and petrels at night—when they can be confused by artificial light—then release them in the right direction in the morning.
    — Michael S. Nolan, National Geographic, 12 June 2019
  • Conservationists have long worried about microplastics, the tiny bits that have been found in the stomachs of seabirds, including many petrels, auklets and gulls that live along the California coast.
    — Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Mar. 2018
  • The explosive growth in mice has attracted burrowing owls, who not only eat the mice but also prey upon the storm-petrels, a rare bird with a declining population.
    — Laura Newberry, latimes.com, 7 July 2019
  • The explosive growth in mice, which first landed on the islands during the California Gold Rush, has attracted burrowing owls, who not only eat the mice but also prey upon the storm-petrels.
    — Rosanna Xia, latimes.com, 10 July 2019
  • Offshore: Small flocks of red-necked phalaropes, parasitic and pomarine jaegers, roseate terns, and larger groups of storm-petrels and shearwaters numbering into the hundreds were seen from Jeffrey’s Ledge.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 4 Aug. 2019
  • Others, such as the Kermadec petrel and white-bellied storm petrel, found on surrounding islets, may return on their own—providing this summer's campaign can end the centurylong reign of the rats.
    — John Pickrell, Science | AAAS, 5 June 2019
  • Now, Mann and her colleagues are left with an entirely different challenge: how to bring back the seabirds that have long since abandoned Lehua Island, including the ʻuaʻu (Hawaiian petrel), ‘ewa‘ewa (sooty tern) and hinaokū (blue-gray noddy).
    — Tim Lydon, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 Apr. 2023
  • With the rats gone, conservationists expect to see an explosion in the number of albatrosses, skuas, terns, petrels, and South Georgia pipits and pintail ducks.
    — Charlie Hamilton James, National Geographic, 17 June 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'petrel.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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