Because they feed on surface-swimming organisms – small shrimp and squid –
petrels fly close to the water with erratic fluttering wing motions. In stormy
weather the bird seems to be patting the waves with one foot and then the other,
as though it were walking on water. For this reason, as William Dampier noted in
1703, “seamen give them the name of Petrels, in allusion to Saint Peter’s
walking upon the Lake of Gennersareth” to join Jesus (Matthew 14:28). Petrel was
first either spelled pitteral in English, from the Latin proper name Pettrillus
(“little Peter”), or Peterel, which would make it a diminutive of the English
Peter. The common petrel is a small, sooty-black bird about the size of a
sparrow with white markings; its scientific name is Procellaridae pelagicius.
But petrels actually come from three avian families: Hydrobatidae,
Procellariidae, and Oceanitidae (also known as Pelicanoididae). Hydribates
pelagicius is one of various species called the stormy petrel, or Mother Carey’s
chicken, and is believed to be a harbinger of bad weather, figuring in a number
of superstitions. In Poor Jack, for instance… Captain Maryat writes that the
birds were thought to be the souls of drowned and shipwrecked sailors “come to
warn us of the approaching storm.” Therefore the name stormy petrel or petrel is
used figuratively to describe someone whose coming indicates trouble or someone
who delights in discord or controversy. Other important Atlantic forms are
Leach’s petrel, or the fork-tailed petrel, a pearly gray species with white
undersides named for the British naturalist William Elforth Leach (1790-1836),
and Wilson’s petrel, a bird common to the American side of the Atlantic that is
named for American ornithologist Alexander Wilson (1766-1813).