What is "sooty shearwater"

The sooty shearwater (Ardenna grisea) is a medium-large shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. Ardenna was first used to refer to a seabird by Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi in 1603, and grisea is medieval Latin for "grey".

In New Zealand it is also known by its Māori name tītī and as muttonbird, like its relatives the wedge-tailed shearwater (A. pacificus) and the Australian short-tailed shearwater (A. tenuirostris).

It appears to be particularly closely related to the great shearwater (A. gravis) and the short-tailed shearwater, all blunt-tailed, black-billed species, but its precise relationships are obscure. In any case, these three species are among the larger species of shearwater that have been moved into a separate genus Ardenna based on a phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA.