3980 The Southern Giant Petrel: Ogre of the High Seas The Procellariiformes have always seemed to me one of the more distinguished orders of birds. The root of the word — procellarum — means “violent wind” or “storm,” and members of the order, which includes albatrosses, shearwaters, petrels, and the like, are famous for their flight: The largest of them, the Wandering and Royal albatrosses, have the longest wingspan of any bird, at up to 11 feet. With their wings locked in position, albatrosses can glide for hours without flapping, dipping and climbing with and against the winds. It’s called dynamic soaring, and it’s the stuff of poetry. No one’s writing poems about the Southern Giant Petrel. The Southern Giant Petrel and its cousin, the Northern Giant Petrel, are the exiles of their order—the lumbering brutes of the Procellariiformes. (They don’t even share the same taxonomic family as the albatrosses—they’re stuck down with the shearwaters, in...