pelagic bird
- noun
- /pəˈlædʒɪk bɜrd/
- Specialized
:
ave pelágica
- Many pelagic birds feed on fish and squid while flying over vast, open waters.
Examples
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During our boat trip, we spotted a variety of pelagic birds soaring gracefully above the waves.
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The researcher noted that several species of pelagic birds migrate thousands of miles across the ocean each year.
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There were many other pelagic birds sighted each day, and of the 78 species we saw, most are found only in the Antarctic.
Academic text (1994)
Synonyms
10
1.9
A bird that lives near the sea and often flies over water, like gulls or albatrosses
9
6.9
A very large sea bird with long narrow wings that glides over the ocean
1
9.5
A sea bird with long wings that flies low over waves
1
9.6
A small sea bird with long wings that flies far from land
1
2.0
A bird that lives near the sea, like a gull
1
7.5
A very large sea bird that has a mostly white body and very long black wings and flies long distances
A bird that lives mainly on the open sea far from land
A bird that lives near the sea, like gulls or pelicans
A large sea bird with long wings, tube nostrils, and a hooked bill that travels the open ocean
A seabird with long wings that flies long distances over the ocean, like petrels or shearwaters
A large sea bird with dark feathers and black feet that flies over the North Pacific
A mostly white sea bird with webbed feet and long tail feathers that lives far from land
A mostly white sea bird with webbed feet and long tail feathers that lives in warm seas far from land
A mostly white tropical bird with webbed feet and long tail feathers that lives at sea
A group of seabirds called tropicbirds with long tail feathers found in tropical oceans
How Offshore
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a bird that lives on or travels over the open sea' is directly and transparently built from 'pelagic' (relating to the open ocean) + 'bird' (a flying animal). This straightforward adjective+noun composition follows normal compositional rules and is cross-linguistically analogous, so learners who know both constituents will readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Pelagic bird comes from an old Greek word; pelagic means 'open sea'. So a pelagic bird is a bird that lives or travels out on the ocean, 'far from land'.