Chemical profiles of Leach's storm-petrel (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) feathers collected on Bon Portage Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

Avian chemical communication, once largely overlooked, is a growing field that has revealed the important role that olfaction plays in the social lives of some birds. Leach’s storm-petrels (Oceanodroma leucorhoa) have a remarkable sense of smell and a strong, musky scent. This long-lived, monogamous seabird relies on olfaction for nest relocation and foraging, but whether they use scent for communication is less well studied. They are nocturnally active at the breeding colony and yet successfully reunite with their mate despite poor night-vision, indicating an important role for non-visual communication. We investigated the chemical profiles of Leach’s storm-petrels to determine whether there is socially relevant information encoded in their plumage odor. To capture the compounds comprising their strong scent, we developed a method to study the compounds present in the air surrounding their feathers using headspace stir bar sorptive extraction coupled with gas-chromatography mass-spectr...