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Somerville College, Oxford

Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Vera Brittain and Dorothy L. Sayers. It began admitting men in 1994. Its library is one of Oxford's largest college libraries. The college's liberal tone derives from its founding by social liberals, as Oxford's first non-denominational college for women, unlike the Anglican Lady Margaret Hall, the other to open that year. In 1964, it was among the first to cease locking up at night to stop students staying out late. No gowns are worn at formal halls.

In 2021 it was recognised as a sanctuary campus by City of Sanctuary UK. It is one of three colleges to offer undergraduates on-site lodging throughout their course. It stands near the Science Area, University Parks, Oxford University Press, Jericho, and Green Templeton, St Anne's, Keble and St Benet's. Over a third of its 650 students are not from the UK. Over half the UK admissions are from state schools – close to the university average. Its total net assets in 2021 were £238 million, the seventh highest of an Oxford undergraduate college. Its sister college at Cambridge is Girton.

Founding
In June 1878, the Association for the Higher Education of Women was formed, aiming for the eventual creation of a college for women in Oxford. Some of the more prominent members of the association were George Granville Bradley, Master of University College, T. H. Green, a prominent liberal philosopher and Fellow of Balliol College, and Edward Stuart Talbot, Warden of Keble College. Talbot insisted on a specifically Anglican institution, which was unacceptable to most of the other members. The two parties eventually split, and Talbot's group (the "Christ Church camp") founded Lady Margaret Hall, which opened its doors for students in 1879, the same year as Somerville did.

Thus, in 1879, a second committee was formed to create a college "in which no distinction will be made between students on the ground of their belonging to different religious denominations." This committee was called the "Balliol camp" and had close ties to the Liberal Party. This second committee included A. H. D. Acland, Thomas Hill Green, George William Kitchin, James Legge, Henry Nettleship, Walter Pater, Henry Francis Pelham, its chairman John Percival, Grace Prestwich, Eleanor Smith, A. G. Vernon Harcourt, and Mary Ward. Other people who assisted in the founding were Anna Swanwick, Bertha Johnson, Charlotte Byron Green, and Owen Roberts.

This new effort resulted in the founding of Somerville Hall, named after the then recently deceased Scottish mathematician and renowned scientific writer Mary Somerville. It was felt that the name would reflect the virtues of liberalism and academic success which the college wished to embody. She was admired by the founders of the college as a scholar, as well as for her religious and political views, including her conviction that women should have equality in terms of suffrage and access to education.

Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre was chosen as the first principal because, though not a well-known academic at the time, her background was felt to reflect the college's political stance. Because of its status as both women's college and non-denominational institution, Somerville was widely regarded within Oxford as "an eccentric and somewhat alarming institution."

Women's college
When it opened, Somerville Hall had twelve students, ranging in age between 17 and 36. The first 21 students from Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall attended lectures in rooms above a baker's shop on Little Clarendon Street. Just two of the original 12 students admitted in 1879 remained in Oxford for three years, the period of residence required for male students to complete a bachelor's degree.

Increasingly, however, as the college admitted more students, it became more formalised. Somerville appointed Lilla Haigh as its first in-house tutor in 1882, and by the end of the 1890s female students were permitted to attend lectures in almost all colleges. In 1891 it became the first women's hall to introduce entrance exams and in 1894 the first of the five women's halls of residence to adopt the title of college (changing its name to Somerville College), the first of them to appoint its own teaching staff, and the first to build a library. In Oxford legend it soon became known as the "bluestocking college", its excellent examination results refuting the widespread belief that women were incapable of high academic achievement.

In the 1910s, Somerville became known for its support for the women's suffrage campaign. In 1920, Oxford University allowed women to matriculate and therefore gain degrees. From the college's inception, all female students had to be chaperoned when in the presence of male students. The practice was abolished in 1925, although male visitors to the college were still subject to a curfew. In the same year the college was granted its charter.

The Mutual Admiration Society
The Mutual Admiration Society (MAS) was a literary society (or literary circle) of women who became friends at Somerville College. Its members included Dorothy L. Sayers, Muriel St Clare Byrne, Charis Frankenburg, Dorothy Rowe, and Amphilis Throckmorton Middlemore, among others.

The society of the title was a real club. The members composed poetry and prose for each other's pleasure. Apart from Sayers, none of them was a household name, though all were notable. Mo Moulton argued in their Agatha Award-winning book, The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World For Women, that each one lived a life worthy of attention.

Years later, the writer Vera Brittain — a Somerville contemporary of the group, but not one of its members — recalled that the MAS “took themselves very seriously”.

First World War
During the First World War, Somerville College together with the Examination Schools and other Oxford buildings were requisitioned by the War Office to create the Third Southern General Hospital, a facility for the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat military casualties. For the duration of the war, Somerville students relocated to Oriel College. Because many male students had left Oxford to enlist in the military, Somerville was able to rent St Mary Hall Quad which they bricked off from the rest of the college to segregate it from Oriel's remaining male students. Many students and tutors were involved in work in World War I and some of them went to the Western Front in France.

Notable patients who stayed in Somerville include the war poets Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon and R. E. Vernède. Sassoon arrived on 2 August 1916. Graves and Sassoon later reminisced about their time at Somerville Hospital: How unlike you to crib my idea of going to the Ladies' College at Oxford, Sassoon wrote to Graves in 1917, and called it very much like Paradise. At Somerville College, Graves met his first love, a nurse and professional pianist called Marjorie. About his time at Somerville, he wrote: ''I enjoyed my stay at Somerville. The sun shone, and the discipline was easy''. Alfred Mills was received in the hospital in 1916 and officer Llewelyn Davies died at the college.

Once the war ended, the return to normality between Oriel and Somerville was delayed, sparking both frustration and an incident in spring 1919 known as the "Oriel raid," in which male students made a hole in the wall dividing the sexes. In July 1919 the principal (Emily Penrose) and fellows returned to Somerville. Alumna Vera Brittain wrote about the impact of the war in Oxford and paid tribute to the work of the principal, Miss Penrose, in her memoir Testament of Youth.

Admission of men
Starting in the 1970s, the traditionally all-male colleges in Oxford began to admit female students. Since it was assumed that recruiting from a wider demographic would guarantee better students, there was pressure on single-sex colleges to change their policy to avoid falling down the rankings. All-female colleges, like Somerville, found it increasingly difficult to attract good applicants and fell to the bottom of the intercollegiate academic rankings during the period.

During the 1980s, there was much debate as to whether women's colleges should become mixed. Somerville remained a women's college until 1992, when its statutes were amended to permit male students and fellows; the first male fellows were appointed in 1993, and the first male students admitted in 1994. Somerville became the second-to-last college (after St Hilda's) to become coeducational. A 50 per cent male/female gender balance has been maintained to this day, though without formal quotas.

"In the 1890s Somerville helped fashion the 'New Woman'; a century later... the college has set itself the perhaps greater challenge of educating the 'New Man.'"

Buildings and grounds
The college and its main entrance, the Porters' Lodge, are located at the southern end of Woodstock Road, with Little Clarendon Street to the south, Walton Street to the west and the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter to the north. The front of the college runs between the Oxford Oratory and the Faculty of Philosophy. Somerville has buildings of various architectural styles, many of which bear the names of former principals of the college, located around one of Oxford's biggest quads. Five buildings are Grade II-listed.

A 2017 archaeological evaluation of the site shows that in the medieval period the area now occupied by Somerville lay in fields beyond the boundary of Oxford. There is evidence of 17th-century building and earthworks beneath the site, some of which almost certainly relates to the defensive network placed around the city by Royalists during the Civil War. There are also remains of some 19th-century buildings, including a stone-lined well.

Walton House
The original building of Somerville Hall, Walton House (commonly called House) was built in 1826 and purchased from St John's College in 1880 amid fears that the men's colleges might, in the future, repossess the site for their own purposes. The house could only accommodate seven of the twelve students who came up to Oxford in the first year. In 1881, Sir Thomas Graham Jackson was commissioned to build a new south wing which could accommodate eleven more students. In 1892, Walter Cave added a north wing and an extra storey. He also installed a gatehouse at the Woodstock Road entrance. In 1897/98, the Eleanor Smith Cottages were added, adjoining Walton House.

Today House is home to only one or two students, and, until 2014, it housed the college bar. It also contains Green Hall, where guests to college are often greeted and in which prospective students are registered and wait for interviews; some of the college's paintings by Roger Fry are located here. Most of the administration of college, and the academic pigeon-holes are in House, as is the Mary Somerville Room, a reception room featuring paintings by Mary Somerville, George Romney and George Frederic Watts.

Park
Originally known as West, from its location in the college, the idea of building a second self-contained hall was inspired by Newnham College, Cambridge. It was designed by Harry Wilkinson Moore and built in two stages. The 1885–1887 phase saw the construction of rooms for 18 students with their own dining-room, sitting rooms and vice-principal. This was a deliberate policy aimed at replicating the family environment that the women students had left. It had the effect of turning House and West into rivals. The second building stage (1888–1894) created two sets of tutors' rooms, a further 19 rooms and the West Lodge (now Park Lodge). In 2004 it was renamed Park in honour of Daphne Park, Principal from 1980 to 1989.

Today there are over 60 student and fellows' rooms in the building along with a music room and a computer room. Park is a Grade II-listed building.

Library
The Grade II-listed library designed by Basil Champneys in 1903 was opened by John Morley the following year. Specially for the opening, Demeter was written by Robert Bridges and performed for the first time. Somerville Library was the first purpose-built library in the women's colleges of the university. With some foresight it was designed to contain 60,000 volumes, although the college only possessed 6,000 when it opened. It now holds around 120,000 items (95,000 on open shelves), as one of the largest college libraries in the university.

Amelia Edwards, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin and Vera Brittain have been notable benefactors to the library. It contains paintings by Mary Somerville, John Constable, Maud Sumner and Patrick George.

The John Stuart Mill room contains what was Mill's personal library in London at the time of his death, with annotations in many of the books.

The library dominates the north wing of the main quadrangle, having been designed to bring the college together, and is open 24 hours, with access to college-wide wifi, a group study room, and computing and printing facilities. It gives full satisfaction according to several annual student surveys.

Hall and Maitland
There was no hall large enough to seat the entire college until 1911, when Maitland Hall and Maitland, designed by Edmund Fisher in Queen Anne style and Edwardian Baroque, were opened by H. A. L. Fisher, the Vice-Chancellor of the university and Gilbert Murray. Murray, whose translations of Greek drama were performed at Somerville in 1912 and 1946, supported Somerville in many ways, including endowing its first research fellowship. A fund was raised as a memorial to Miss Maitland, Principal of Somerville Hall (College from 1894) from 1889 to 1906, and the money was used to pay for oak panelling in Hall. The panelling of the south wall was designed to frame a portrait of Mary Somerville by John Jackson. The buildings were constructed on the site of an adjoining building gifted to Somerville by E. J. Forester in 1897 and bought from University and Balliol Colleges for £4,000 and £1,400 respectively. There was difficulty in constructing the buildings, now thought to have resulted from the outer limit of the Oxford city fortifications running under the site. In 1935, Morley Horder reconstructed the archway connecting Maitland Hall and the south wing of Walton House, creating a Reading Room off the main hall; in 1947, André Gide gave a lecture that filled both these rooms and the staircase and quadrangle outside.

Somerville's is the one Oxford dining hall where all portraits show women. They were painted by Michael Noakes, Herbert James Gunn, George Percy Jacomb-Hood, William Coldstream, John Whittall, Francis Helps, Claude Rogers, Humphrey Ocean, Thomas Leveritt and Richard Twose.

Hall and Maitland form the east face of the main quad, as Grade II-listed buildings. The Senior Common Room is situated on the ground floor. The first floor holds the pantry and the hall, in which Formal Hall (called guest night) is held weekly in term time.

Maitland now houses few students, being mainly occupied by fellows' offices and the college IT office. The building, named after Principal Agnes Maitland, stands to the south of Hall.

Penrose
The Penrose block was designed by Harold Rogers in 1925 and its first students were installed in 1927. A row of poplars had to be removed in 1926 to construct the south-western end of the main quadrangle on the site of 119 and 119A Walton Street. It was refurbished in 2014, with carpets replacing the bare wooden floorboards, and new furniture. Penrose is named after Dame Emily Penrose, third Principal of the college. It contains mainly first-year accommodation in about 30 rooms.

Darbishire
Darbishire Quad was the culmination of a long-standing project to absorb Woodstock Road properties above the Oxford Oratory. In 1920, three houses (29, 31 and 33) were bought by the college from the vicar of St Giles' Church, Oxford for £1,300. The three had been constructed in 1859 and rented by the college before the purchase. The adjoining Waggon and Horses pub was purchased from St John's College in 1923. These buildings were demolished in 1932–1933 together with the old Gate House.

Morley Horder was commissioned to build a quadrangle that would fill the space left by the demolished structures, using a loan of £12,000 from Christ Church. The porters' lodge and New Council Room were constructed at the entrance to the quad, which housed undergraduates and fellows. The coat of arms of Somerville and of co-founder John Percival, first Principal Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre and Helen Darbishire were carved by Edmund Ware inside the quadrangle. The archway leading to Hall was added in 1938.

Originally the East Quadrangle, it was opened in June 1934 by Lord Halifax as "a notable addition to buildings of varying styles" (varii generis aedificiia additamentum nobile) in the Creweian Oration during the Encaenia. Darbishire was renamed in 1962 in honour of the principal of the college during its construction, Helen Darbishire.

Today Darbishire contains some 50 student rooms, along with tutors' offices, the college archive and a medical room. The offices of the Global Ocean Commission, co-chaired by José María Figueres, Trevor Manuel and David Miliband, were housed in Darbishire as part of a partnership with Somerville in 2012–2016, when the organisation completed its work.

Darbishire Quad is described on the opening page of Gaudy Night by alumna Dorothy L. Sayers. The clock was donated by alumna Eleanor Rathbone.

Chapel
Built largely with funds provided by alumna Emily Georgiana Kemp in 1935, Somerville Chapel reflects the non-denominational principle on which the college was founded in 1879. No religious tests were used for admission and non-denominational Christian prayers were said in college.

Instead of a chaplain, there is a "Chapel Director", in keeping with its non-denominational tradition. The chapel provides opportunities for Christian worship in addition to hosting speakers with a multiple range of religious perspectives. It holds an excellent mixed-voice Choir of Somerville College, which tours and issues occasional recordings.

Hostel and Holtby
Hostel is a small block between House and Darbishire completed in 1950 by Geddes Hyslop. It houses 10 students on three floors. The Bursary is on the ground floor.

Holtby, designed in 1951 and completed in 1956 by Hyslop, lies above the library extension, adjacent to Park. It has ten rooms for undergraduates and is named after the alumna Winifred Holtby.

Vaughan and Margery Fry & Elizabeth Nuffield House
Designed by Sir Philip Dowson between 1958 and 1966, Vaughan and Margery Fry & Elizabeth Nuffield House (commonly shortened to Margery Fry) are both named for former principals of the college, while Elizabeth Nuffield was an important proponent of women's education and along with her husband Lord Nuffield, a financial benefactor of the college. Margery Fry was opened in 1964 by Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Vaughan in 1966. Constructed in the same architectural style, with an exterior concrete frame standing away from the walls of the interior edifice, the two buildings overlie a podium of shops and an arcaded walkway in Little Clarendon Street.

Vaughan is the larger of the two, with eleven rows to its concrete frame compared to eight. It is Grade II-listed and contains some 60 undergraduate rooms, smaller than those of Margery Fry and used exclusively for first-year students, along with the junior deans. Vaughan was refurbished in 2013, with new bathroom facilities, including, for the first time, sinks. Beneath the two buildings, a tunnel provides access to Somerville from Little Clarendon Street.

Margery Fry serves as the centre of the postgraduate student community at Somerville, with 24 graduate rooms. Other accommodation for graduate students is provided in buildings adjacent to the college.

Wolfson
Sir Philip Dowson was commissioned to design a building at the back of the college to house undergraduates and offices for fellows and Wolfson. Like his other work in Somerville, it is constructed largely of glass and concrete; it is also Grade II listed. A four-storey building with five bays on each floor, Wolfson has impressive views of Walton Street from the rear and Somerville's main quadrangle from the front. Wolfson is named after the building's main benefactor, Sir Isaac Wolfson, and was opened in 1967 by Principal Barbara Craig, with Harold Macmillan, Dorothy Hodgkin and Lord Wolfson giving speeches.

The ground floor contains the Flora Anderson Hall (FAH) and Brittain-Williams Room, named after Vera Brittain and Shirley Williams, the college's most famous mother-daughter alumnae. The room was designed in 2012 by the architect Niall McLaughlin and opened on 29 November 2013 by Williams at an event that included her unveiling a portrait of herself, which now hangs in the room. The FAH is used for lectures and events, notably college parties (or bops) and mock exams, known as Collections.

Margaret Thatcher Centre and Dorothy Hodgkin Quadrangle
Named after the alumna-Prime Minister, the MTC comprises a lecture room, ante room and lobby used for meetings, conferences and other internal college events. The lecture room has full AV facilities and for 60 seated patrons. A bust of Margaret Thatcher stands in the lobby and the meeting room has portraits of Somerville's two prime-minister alumnae: of Margaret Thatcher by Michael Noakes and Indira Gandhi by Sanjay Bhattacharyya.

The Dorothy Hodgkin Quad (DHQ) was conceived in 1985, completed in 1991 and named after Somerville's Nobel Prize-winner. The quadrangle is above the MTC and designed around self-contained flats of two and four bedrooms with communal kitchens, housing mainly finalists and some second-year students.

Architect Geoffrey Beard's scheme was submitted to Oxford City Council in 1986 and the energies of Sir Geoffrey Leigh and alumna and former principal Baroness Daphne Park brought support from around the world. The buildings were opened in 1991 by Margaret Thatcher, Dorothy Hodgkin, Principal Catherine Hughes and College Visitor Baron Roy Jenkins.

St Paul's Nursery
Somerville College was the first Oxford college to provide a nursery for children of Fellows and staff and is still one of the few colleges to do so. Alumna Dorothy Hodgkin donated much of her Nobel Prize money to the project. St Paul's Nursery is also open to families unconnected with the college and cares for 16 children between the ages of three months and five years.

Radcliffe Observatory Quarter
ROQ East and West flank the north side of Somerville and overlook the site of the university's new Blavatnik School of Government and Mathematical Institute. Completed in 2011, they were the first new buildings in the university's Radcliffe Observatory Quarter and have won four awards for their architect Niall McLaughlin. The project was also awarded Oxford City Council's David Steel Sustainable Building Award, being commended for balancing Somerville's collegiate heritage with the need for energy efficiency. Energy-efficiency measures include renewable technologies such as solar thermal energy and ground source heat pumps.

The buildings house 68 students in en-suite rooms. There are several rooms and facilities designed to help those with disabilities, including lifts and adjoining carer rooms. The buildings were funded by donations of over £2.7 million from over 1,000 alumni and friends of the college and by a significant loan. There is now an unimpeded view of the Radcliffe Observatory.

The Terrace
The bar and café of the college, The Terrace, opened in 2013 (replacing the old bar in House) and is attached to the Vaughan building. It is housed in a mainly glass structure, with seating in the college colours of red and black. It has an open-air terrace looking down on Little Clarendon Street. The Terrace has the usual pool table and bar facilities and serves the college drink, "Stone-cold Jane Austen", consisting of blue VK, Southern Comfort, and Magners cider, as well as the "College Triple" and the non-alcoholic "Somerville Sunset".

Catherine Hughes Building
Named after Somerville's late principal in 1989–1996, the Catherine Hughes Building was completed in October 2019 and provides 68 additional bedrooms. Designed by Niall McLaughlin Architects, it includes en suite bathrooms, kitchens and accessible rooms on every floor and a new communal study area for graduate students.

The red-brick building has a frontage onto Walton Street and additional access from the college gardens, aligning with key levels on the adjacent Penrose Building. The bedrooms are arranged in clusters with kitchens and circulation spaces forming social focal points.

The building's construction has given Somerville sufficient accommodation to be one of three Oxford colleges which can allow all students applying from 2017 to live in college for the entirety of their three or four-year undergraduate degree courses.

Gardens
Somerville is one of few Oxford colleges where students may walk on the grass. An unassuming frontage opens onto a vast green space looked after by two gardeners. The original site consisted of a paddock, an orchard and a vegetable garden and was bounded by large trees. It was home to a donkey, two cows, a pony and a pig. The paddock was soon transformed into tennis courts, where huge tents were erected during World War I. During World War II, large water tanks were dug in the Main Quad and in Darbishire Quad in case of firebombing, and the lawns dug up and planted with vegetables.

In the Main or Library Quad has a cedar planted by Harold Macmillan in 1976, after an earlier cedar fell victim to a winter storm. Another tree, a Picea likiangensis (var. rubescens), was planted in 2007 on the chapel lawn, providing Somerville with an outdoor Christmas tree. The library border of lavender and Agapanthus references the bluestocking reputation of Somerville. The tory blue Ceratostigma willmottianum stands outside the Margaret Thatcher Centre. The garden outside the Thatcher Centre, now dedicated to Lisa Minoprio, was originally designed by the former director of the Oxford Botanic Garden and Lecturer in Plant Sciences Timothy Walker, and retains yellow and blue as its theme colours.

There are nods to Somerville's long-standing links with India, the most notable being a large specimen of the Indian horse chestnut, Aesculus indica, planted on the Library lawn in 2019. Features of interest include a narrow bed of low-growing Mediterranean plants in front of Wolfson in a modernist style, a varied selection of mature trees in the Library Quad, and large herbaceous borders containing emblematic Somerville thistles (Echinops).

The annual summer and winter bedding plants in Darbishire Quad, the beds outside the SCR, and those in pots around site have traditionally been in the Victorian style, to reflect the era of inception of the college. However, this is evolving due to a change in garden management in late 2019, with aims of following more environmentally friendly growing principles and developing a more contemporary style. The western wall of Penrose and the northern wall of Vaughan form a secluded area, historically known as the Fellows' Garden (currently in a transitional phase). It is distinct from the main quad and separated from it by a hedge and a wall, and which were previously kitchen gardens. This walled garden is home to a sundial, commissioned in 1926 and commemorating first principal Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre, and a garden roller gifted by the parents of tutor Rose Sidgwick.

In 1962, Henry Moore lent his work Falling Warrior to the college and Barbara Hepworth lent Core shortly afterwards. There are also permanent sculptures by Wendy Taylor, Friedrich Werthmann and Somervillian Polly Ionides. The most striking sculpture on site is Taylor's Triad (1971), situated on the Chapel Lawn in front of Maitland building.

Student life
In 2011 student satisfaction was rated in some categories as the highest in the university. Central to it is its large quad, onto which most accommodation blocks back; it is often filled with students in summer. Somerville is one of the few Oxford colleges where students (as opposed to just fellows) may walk on the grass. Somerville is sometimes nicknamed The Ville. Formal Halls take place on some Tuesdays and Fridays about six times a term. No gowns are worn and the grace is Benedictus benedicat. The college song is Omnes laetae nunc sodales.

Sports
Somerville has a gym beneath Vaughan with treadmills, cross-trainers and weights. It shares a sports ground with Wadham College and St Hugh's College, in Marston Ferry Road. There are clubs and teams in men's and women's football, rugby (with Corpus Christi), mixed lacrosse, cricket, swimming, hockey, netball, basketball, pool, water polo, tennis, squash, badminton, cycling, golf, rounders, and croquet.

Both the Somerville cricket and netball team won Cuppers for the 2014/15 season. The swimming team won Cuppers for the 2015/16 season.

Rowing

Somerville formed a rowing team in 1921. It competes in both of the annual university bumps races, Torpids and Summer Eights. The women are the most successful women's rowing team at the university, having won the title Head of the River eight times in Summer Eights and five times in Torpids. The club shares the award-winning University College Boathouse on The Isis with St Peter's College, University College and Wolfson College.

Choir
The Choir of Somerville College is mixed voice and led by the Director of Chapel Music, Will Dawes. In conjunction with the organ scholars, the choir is central to the musical life at the college.

There are regular concerts and cathedral visits, and recitals featuring soloists from the choir. In recent years it has toured Germany (2005 and 2009), Italy (2010) and the United States (2014 and 2016). It sings every term-time Sunday at the evening service. The organ of the college chapel is a traditionally voiced instrument by Harrison & Harrison.

Somerville offers up to five Choral Exhibitions a year to applicants reading any subject.

The college choir has released two CDs on the Stone Records label, "Requiem Aeternam" (2012) and "Advent Calendar" (2013).

Triennial Ball
Once every three years, Somerville hosts a ball jointly with Jesus College, Oxford. The last, for over a thousand people, was held in April 2022 and the next ball will come in 2025.

However, the 2013 ball, The Last Ball, was mired in controversy reported in national news. The organisers had intended to display a live nurse shark as entertainment. Permission for the shark was initially granted by the principal Alice Prochaska, but was subsequently revoked following student protests. The ball was widely condemned for poor organisation, examples of which included a lack of canapés and the presence of only one food stand, serving pork; the vegetarian options were said to run out quickly and revellers were reportedly set on fire by the pork rôtisserie. The Guardian reported "The ball descended into farce with guests questioning what the organisers had done with the money paid by 1,000 guests."

Academic reputation
Before men were admitted Somerville, under the principalship of Barbara Craig, established a position at or near the head of the Norrington Table. Currently Somerville is in the lower half of the university's colleges for academic achievement. For the academic year 2018/19, it came 21st out of 30 in the Norrington Table, which lists the university's undergraduate colleges in order of their students' examination performances. The college has been recognised as a University College of Sanctuary by the UK charity City of Sanctuary, and offers a fully-funded postgraduate Sanctuary scholarship.

University Challenge
Somerville has had recent success disproportionate to its size on the TV quiz show University Challenge. It won the competition once, triumphing in the University Challenge 2001–02 series by beating Imperial College, London by 200 points to 185. Croatian quizzer Dorjana Širola was one of the contestants. Recently the college team reached the final of the University Challenge 2013–14 series, losing in the final to Trinity College, Cambridge, with a score of 135 to 240.

India
Somerville College plays a major role in relations between Oxford and India. Cornelia Sorabji, born in the Bombay Presidency of British India, became the first Indian woman to study at any British university, when she came to Somerville in 1889 to read law, while Indira Gandhi, India's first female prime minister, read Modern History at the college in 1937. Radhabai Subbarayan, the first woman member of the Indian Council of States (Rajya Sabha) studied at Somerville College as well, as did princess Bamba Sutherland, the last surviving member of a family that had ruled the Sikh Empire in the Punjab, and her sister Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh. Other alumni with links to India include Moon Moon Sen, Agnes de Selincourt, Smit Singh, Gurmehar Kaur, Hilda Stewart Reid and Utsa Patnaik. Former principal Barbara Craig (1967–1980) and fellow Aditi Lahiri were born in Kolkata.

Sonia Gandhi visited Somerville in 2002 and presented a portrait of her late mother-in-law to her alma mater. Indira Gandhi received an honorary degree from the college in 1971.

In 2012, the college and Oxford University announced a £19 million Indira Gandhi Centre for Sustainable Development. India provided £3 million and the university and college £5.5 million. The name was later changed to the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development (OICSD). The OICSD carries out research on sustainable development challenges facing India and provides scholarships for outstanding Indian students. The centre now hosts 12 India scholars. A new building is planned in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, adjacent to the college's ROQ accommodation.

Somerville's choir was in 2018 the first Oxford college choir to tour India.

Alumni
Somervillians include Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, Nobel Prize winning scientist Dorothy Hodgkin, television personalities Esther Rantzen and Susie Dent, reformer Cornelia Sorabji, writers Marjorie Boulton, A. S. Byatt, Vera Brittain, Susan Cooper, Penelope Fitzgerald, Winifred Holtby, Nicole Krauss, Iris Murdoch and Dorothy L. Sayers, politicians Shirley Williams, Thérèse Coffey, Margaret Jay and Sam Gyimah, Princess Bamba Sutherland and her sister, biologist Marian Dawkins, philosophers G. E. M. Anscombe, Patricia Churchland, Philippa Foot and Mary Midgley, psychologist Anne Treisman, archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, actress Moon Moon Sen, soprano Emma Kirkby, banker Baroness Vadera and numerous (women's rights) activists.

Somerville alumnae have achieved an impressive number of "firsts", both (inter)nationally and at the University of Oxford. Arguably the most prominent of these are: the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher; the first, and only, British woman to win a Nobel Prize in science Dorothy Hodgkin and the first woman to lead the world's largest democracy Indira Gandhi, who was Prime Minister of India for much of the 1970s.

Somerville has educated at least 28 Dames, 17 heads of Oxford colleges, 11 life peers, ten MPs, four Olympic rowers, three of The 50 greatest British writers since 1945, two prime ministers, two princesses, a queen consort, and a Nobel laureate.

Former students of Somerville belong to an alumni group, the Somerville Association, which was originally founded in 1888.

Fellows
Notable fellows of Somerville College (excluding alumni) include philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe, biochemist Louise Johnson, classical archaeologist Margarete Bieber, Egyptologist Käthe Bosse-Griffiths, classicists Edith Hall and Lotte Labowsky, author Alan Hollinghurst, astronomer Chris Lintott, International Federation of University Women founder Rose Sidgwick, botanist Timothy Walker and philologist Anna Morpurgo Davies.

Principals

The first principal of Somerville Hall was Madeleine Shaw-Lefèvre (1879–1889). The first principal of Somerville College was Agnes Catherine Maitland (1889–1906), when in 1894 it became the first of the five women's halls to adopt the title of college, the first to appoint its own teaching staff, the first to set an entrance examination, and the first to build a library. She was succeeded by the classical scholar Emily Penrose (1906–1926), who set up in 1903 the Mary Somerville Research Fellowship offering women in Oxford opportunities for research.

The current principal is Janet Royall, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, who took up the appointment in August 2017, succeeding Alice Prochaska. To date, seven principals have been alumnae of Somerville, two of St Hilda's College.

Coat of arms and motto
Like all Oxford colleges, Somerville has a variety of symbols and colours which are associated with it. The college's colours, which feature on the college scarf and on the blades of its boats, are red and black. The combination was originally adopted in the 1890s. Its flag has the shield from the arms on a yellow background.

The two colours also feature in the college's coat of arms, which depicts three mullets in chevron reversed gules, between six crosses crosslet fitched sable. The college's motto, Donec rursus impleat orbem, was originally that of the family of Mary Somerville. Her family befriended the new hall, allowing it to adopt their arms and motto. The Latin motto itself is described as "baffling" as, although it translates as "Until It Should Fill the World Again", what the subject of the sentence ("it") is left unspecified. The crest, which is often omitted, is a hand grasping a crescent and occasionally a helmet with mantling is added.

In popular culture

 * The mystery novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers featuring Lord Peter Wimsey is set in Shrewsbury College (which is a thinly veiled take on Sayers' own Somerville College).
 * In the 2014 film The Amazing Spider-Man 2 directed by Marc Webb, one of the protagonists, Gwen Stacy, is offered a place to study medicine at Somerville. Its coat of arms is featured in one scene.
 * The 2014 biopic Testament of Youth, based on Brittain's memoir of the same name, substituted Merton College, Oxford in the scenes showing Brittain's time as a student at Somerville, arguing that filming in Somerville itself would have been too difficult in light of the new buildings constructed there since the film's time period.
 * Somerville is the recognisable model for St Bride's College in Michaelmas Term at St Bride's by Brunette Coleman (Philip Larkin).
 * In the film Iris from 2001, telling of alumna Iris Murdoch and her relationship with her husband John Bayley, whom she meets during a dinner at the Somerville.
 * Somerville is featured in the BBC series Testament of Youth (1979).
 * In the Japanese manga series Master Keaton, the main character married a mathematics student from Somerville.
 * St Jerome's College in Endymion Spring by alumnus Matthew Skelton is based on Somerville. The cat Mephistopheles is based on the former college cat Pogo.
 * Amory Clay, the main character in Sweet Caress by William Boyd, was encouraged by her teacher to go to Somerville.
 * Grace Ritchie, the protagonist in Slave Of The Passion by Deirdre Wilson has gone up to Somerville.
 * Helena Warner from A Likeness in Stone by Julia Wallis Martin, was a student of Somerville.
 * Eleanor Drummond, the protagonist in Daddy's Girl by Valerie Mendes, went to Somerville.

title: Somerville College, Oxford


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Mnemonic peg system

The mnemonic peg system, invented by Henry Herdson, is a memory aid that works by creating mental associations between two concrete objects in a one-to-one fashion that will later be applied to to-be-remembered information. Typically this involves linking nouns to numbers and it is common practice to choose a noun that rhymes with the number it is associated with. These will be the pegs of the system. These associations have to be memorized one time and can be applied repeatedly to new information that needs to be memorized.

Rhyming peg-word system
The rhyming peg-word system is very simple, as stated above and could look something like this:
 * 1) Sun: Visualize an association between the first item and the sun.
 * 2) Shoe: Visualize an association between the second item and a shoe.
 * 3) Tree: Visualize an association between the third item and a tree.
 * 4) Door: Visualize an association between the fourth item and a door.
 * 5) Hive: Visualize an association between the fifth item and a bee hive.
 * 6) Chicks: Visualize an association between the sixth item and chicks.
 * 7) Heaven: Visualize an association between the seventh item and Heaven.
 * 8) Weight: Visualize an association between the eighth item and weights.
 * 9) Brine: Visualize an association between the ninth item and brine.
 * 10) Hen: Visualize an association between the tenth item and a hen.

For example, to remember the first 8 digits of Pi, using the major system as well:

 * 3: Picture a monkey walking on the Sun.
 * 1: Picture a dog jumping over a shoe.
 * 4: Picture a bottle of rum hanging from a tree.
 * 1: Picture a tube connecting to a door.
 * 5: Picture bees flying from a cup of lemonade as if it is a hive.
 * 9: Picture a beetle climbing onto a chick nest.
 * 2: Picture a newt with angel wings and a halo.
 * 6: Picture a jaguar lifting weights.

The next step is to link the items with some sort of dramatic action, in order to record the order in which they appear.

The less likely you are to have seen the scene in real life, the more likely it is to make a reliably retrievable impression.

Major system
While it is common to link rhyming nouns with numbers, that is by no means the only system. There is also the major system, which connects sounds to numbers. The major system is more complicated to learn than simple rhymes or alphabetic pegs, because it associates numbers 0-9 with a specific letter or sound, then larger numbers can combine to create words out of the sounds. It is limitless in the number of pegs it can produce. Furthermore, a recent modification to the major system introduces the concept of dimensions. The most common association between numbers and letters is the following:

 * 0 = s, x, z
 * 1 = t, d
 * 2 = n
 * 3 = m
 * 4 = r
 * 5 = l
 * 6 = sh, ch, j, soft g
 * 7 = c, k, hard g, q
 * 8 = f, v
 * 9 = p, b

This would make the number 33 "MM" which could be made into the word "mom" to better aid in memorization or 92 is "PN" and could become "pen." "Cat" (or "cut") would correspond to 71, as vowels do not have any value.

PAO system
The person-action-object (PAO) system is the most complex. It associates all numbers 00-99 with a distinctive person, action and object. Any six-digit number can be memorized by using the person assigned the first two digits, the action of the next two digits and the object of the third. For example:

 * The number 34 could be Frank Sinatra.
 * 13 could be the action of kicking.
 * 79 could be a cape.

This would make the number 341379, Frank Sinatra kicking a cape. Memory grand master, Ed Cooke, reportedly has been working on the Millennium PAO system, which would create an association for all numbers 000-999.

Application
The peg system is commonly used by Mental Athletes for memory competitions for events like card memorization as well as digit memorization. The peg system has also been applied in a classroom with learning disabled students. The students that used the peg system performed significantly better than the control in both immediate and delayed tests.

Several studies have investigated the use of this memory mnemonic as a form of an imagery-based memory system within the process of learning a second-language. For example, if a native English speaker is attempting to learn Spanish, they will notice that the Spanish for duck is pato, which is pronounced similarly to the english word pot. The individual can develop a mnemonic peg system in order to remember this association by thinking of a duck with a pot on its head.

One complaint concerning the peg system is that it seems to only be applicable in mundane situations. However, the peg system can be used to remember grocery lists, key points in speeches, and many other lists specific to one's particular area of study or interest. Many recognise that this system can be used to remember a wide variety of objects or information. The peg system works, so long as the information trying to be remembered is specific, able to be visualized, and tied to a unique retrieval cue. This tool of memory can be more efficient than rote memorization.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mnemonic peg system


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Dominic system

The Dominic system is a mnemonic system used to remember sequences of digits similar to the mnemonic major system. It was invented and used in competition by eight-time World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien.

Differences from the major system
The main difference between the Dominic system and the major system is the assignment of sounds and letters to digits. The Dominic system is a letter-based abbreviation system where the letters comprise the initials of someone's name, while the major system is typically used as a phonetic-based consonant system for either objects, animals, persons, or even words. One letter is assigned to each digit; the other sixteen letters of the alphabet are unused.

The major system would assign the sounds T + L to the number 15, and then find a word that has those sounds as the first two consonants. Mnemonic images like Tolkien, tiles, or toolbox could be assigned under the major system. In the Dominic system, 15 would be the letters A and E, and they would be used as the initials of someone's name—for example, Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein would then be given a characteristic action, such as "writing on a blackboard". Each two-digit number would have an associated person and action.

The Dominic system is specifically designed as a person-action system, while the major system can also be used to represent stand-alone objects. Many mnemonists use the major system as a person-action system as well, so the main difference is the way that images are assigned to the numbers.

Like the mnemonic major system, the Dominic system can be combined with a memory palace, thereby creating the Hotel Dominic.

Encoding pairs of digits as people
Using the Dominic system every pair of digits is first associated with a person. O'Brien feels that stories and images created using people are easier to remember. This encoding is carried out ahead of time and the people are reused, since it can take quite some time.

To perform this encoding, each digit is associated with a letter using the table below. These letters then become the initials of the person representing this number. People will often use quite a loose definition of "initials", using the initial letters of a phrase describing a person, such as "80 = HO = Santa Claus, laughing and holding his belly (HO, HO, HO!)".

Encoding pairs of digits as actions
Once each pair of digits has been associated with a person one can then cheaply create a corresponding action for each person. For example, if one had chosen to represent AE as the physicist Albert Einstein one might use a corresponding action of writing on a blackboard.

Usage
Once the mappings of a pair of digits are in place a sequence of digits can be converted into a story by first encoding pairs of digits as people or actions and then chaining these people and actions together.

For example, one might remember the number 2739 as follows: First 27 would be encoded BG and then as Bill Gates, then 39 would be encoded as CN and then Chuck Norris. Using the first two digits as a person and the second two as an action, one creates the image of Bill Gates delivering a roundhouse kick. Similarly 3927 might be converted into the image of Chuck Norris writing software.

Longer numbers become stories. The long number 27636339, for example, could be chunked into 2763 6339 and then converted into BGSC SCCN. If the memorizer has also associated Santa Claus delivering presents with SC, then the chunk 2763 would represent Bill Gates delivering presents while 6339 would represent Santa Claus performing a roundhouse kick. The remembered story, therefore, could be that Bill Gates delivered presents and then got roundhouse kicked by Santa Claus.

The Dominic System is typically used along with the method of loci, which allows the easy recall of the images in order by placing them in locations along a mental journey.

Packs of cards
Although the Dominic system is a method for remembering long sequences of numbers, it can also be used to remember other sequences such as the order of a deck of playing cards. This works by establishing some method of systematically converting the objects into numbers. If the nine of clubs is associated with 39 (CN), for instance, then Chuck Norris or a roundhouse kick could be used in a story describing where the nine of clubs is in the deck.

title: Dominic system


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User:LarsErikKolden

Lars Erik Kolden

Studying philosophy at the University of Oslo, Norway. Current academic subjects: epistemology and philosophy of science.

title: User:LarsErikKolden


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Procellariiformes

Procellariiformes is an order of seabirds that comprises four families: the albatrosses, the petrels and shearwaters, and two families of storm petrels. Formerly called Tubinares and still called tubenoses in English, procellariiforms are often referred to collectively as the petrels, a term that has been applied to all members of the order, or more commonly all the families except the albatrosses. They are almost exclusively pelagic (feeding in the open ocean), and have a cosmopolitan distribution across the world's oceans, with the highest diversity being around New Zealand.

Procellariiforms are colonial, mostly nesting on remote, predator-free islands. The larger species nest on the surface, while most smaller species nest in natural cavities and burrows. They exhibit strong philopatry, returning to their natal colony to breed and returning to the same nesting site over many years. Procellariiforms are monogamous and form long-term pair bonds that are formed over several years and may last for the life of the pair. A single egg is laid per nesting attempt, and usually a single nesting attempt is made per year, although the larger albatrosses may only nest once every two years. Both parents participate in incubation and chick rearing. Incubation times are long compared to other birds, as are fledging periods. Once a chick has fledged there is no further parental care.

Procellariiforms have had a long relationship with humans. They have been important food sources for many people, and continue to be hunted as such in some parts of the world. The albatrosses in particular have been the subject of numerous cultural depictions. Procellariiforms include some of the most endangered bird taxa, with many species threatened with extinction due to introduced predators in their breeding colonies, marine pollution and the danger of fisheries by-catch. Scientists, conservationists, fishermen, and governments around the world are working to reduce the threats posed to them, and these efforts have led to the signing of the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, a legally binding international treaty signed in 2001.

Taxonomy

The order was named Procellariiformes by German anatomist Max Fürbringer in 1888. The word comes from the Latin word procella, which means a violent wind or a storm, and -iformes for order. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the family Hydrobatidae was named Procellariidae, and the family now called Procellariidae was rendered "Puffinidae." The order itself was called Tubinares. A major early work on this group is Frederick DuCane Godman's Monograph of the Petrels, five fascicles, 1907–1910, with figures by John Gerrard Keulemans.

In the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, the tubenoses were included in a greatly enlarged order "Ciconiiformes". This taxonomic treatment was almost certainly erroneous, but its assumption of a close evolutionary relationship with other "higher waterbirds" – such as loons (Gaviiformes) and penguins (Sphenisciformes) – appears to be correct. The procellariiforms are most closely related to penguins, having diverged from them about 60 million years ago.

The diving petrels in the genus Pelecanoides were formerly placed in their own family Pelecanoididae. When genetic studies found that they were embedded within the family Procellariidae, the two families were merged.

All the storm petrels were once placed in the family Hydrobatidae but genetic data indicated that Hydrobatidae consisted of two deeply divergent clades that were not sister taxa. In 2018 the austral storm petrels were moved to the new family Oceanitidae. The northern storm petrels in the family Hydrobatidae are more closely related to the family Procellariidae than they are to the austral storm petrels in the family Oceanitidae.

Earlier molecular phylogenetic studies found the family Oceantidae containing the austral storm petrels as the most basal with differing branching topologies for other three families. More recent large-scale studies have found a consistent pattern with the albatross family Diomedeidae as the most basal and Hydrobatidae sister to Procellariidae.

There are 147 living species of procellariiform worldwide, and the order is divided into four extant families, with a fifth prehistorically extinct:

 * Family Diomedeidae (albatrosses) are very large seabirds with a large strong hooked bill. They have strong legs, enabling them to walk well on land.
 * Family Oceanitidae (Austral storm petrels) are among the smallest seabirds, with fluttering flight and long but weak legs. Most have dark upperparts and a white underside.
 * Family Hydrobatidae (northern storm petrels) are similar to the austral storm petrels but have longer more pointed wings and most species have forked tails.
 * Family Procellariidae (shearwaters, fulmarine petrels, gadfly petrels, and prions) are a varied group of small or medium-sized seabirds, the largest being the giant petrels. They are heavy for their size, with a high wing loading, so they need to fly fast. Most, except the giant petrels, have weak legs and are nearly helpless on land.
 * Family †Diomedeoididae (Early Oligocene – Early Miocene) is an extinct group that had narrow beaks and feet with wide, flat phalanges, especially on the fourth toe.

Fossils of a bird similar to a petrel from the Eocene have been found in the London Clay and in Louisiana. Diving petrels occurred in the Miocene, with a species from that family (Pelecanoides miokuaka) being described in 2007. The most numerous fossils from the Paleogene are those from the extinct family Diomedeoididae, fossils of which have been found in Central Europe and Iran.

Distribution and movements
The procellariiforms have a cosmopolitan distribution across the world's oceans and seas, although at the levels of family and genus there are some clear patterns. Antarctic petrels, Thalassoica antarctica, have to fly over 100 mi to get to the ocean from their breeding colonies in Antarctica, and northern fulmars breed on the northeastern tip of Greenland, the northernmost piece of land. The most cosmopolitan family is the Procellariidae, which are found in tropical, temperate and polar zones of both the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres, though the majority do not breed in the tropics, and half the species are restricted to southern temperate and polar regions. The gadfly petrels, Pterodroma, have a generally tropical and temperate distribution, whereas the fulmarine petrels are mostly polar with some temperate species. The majority of the fulmarine petrels, along with the prions, are confined to the Southern Hemisphere.

The storm petrels are almost as widespread as the procellariids, and fall into two distinct families; the Oceanitidae have a mostly Southern Hemisphere distribution and the Hydrobatidae are found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. Amongst the albatrosses the majority of the family is restricted to the Southern Hemisphere, feeding and nesting in cool temperate areas, although one genus, Phoebastria, ranges across the north Pacific. The family is absent from the north Atlantic, although fossil records indicate they bred there once. Finally the diving petrels are restricted to the Southern Hemisphere.

Migration
The various species within the order have a variety of migration strategies. Some species undertake regular trans-equatorial migrations, such as the sooty shearwater which annually migrates from its breeding grounds in New Zealand and Chile to the North Pacific off Japan, Alaska and California, an annual round trip of 64000 km, the second longest measured annual migration of any bird. A number of other petrel species undertake trans-equatorial migrations, including the Wilson's storm petrel and the Providence petrel, but no albatrosses cross the equator, as they rely on wind assisted flight. There are other long-distance migrants within the order; Swinhoe's storm petrels breed in the western Pacific and migrates to the western Indian Ocean, and Bonin petrels nesting in Hawaii migrate to the coast of Japan during the non-breeding season.

Navigation
Many species in the order travel long distances over open water but return to the same nest site each year, raising the question of how they navigate so accurately. The Welsh naturalist Ronald Lockley carried out early research into animal navigation with the Manx shearwaters that nested on the island of Skokholm. In release experiments, a Manx shearwater flew from Boston to Skokholm, a distance of 3000 mi in 12$1/2$ days. Lockley showed that when released "under a clear sky" with sun or stars visible, the shearwaters oriented themselves and then "flew off in a direct line for Skokholm", making the journey so rapidly that they must have flown almost in a straight line. But if the sky was overcast at the time of release, the shearwaters flew around in circles "as if lost" and returned slowly or not at all, implying that they navigated using astronomical cues.

Researchers have also begun investigating olfaction's role in procellariiform navigation. In a study where Cory's shearwaters were rendered anosmic with zinc sulphate, a compound which kills the surface layer of the olfactory epithelium, and released hundreds of kilometers away from their home colony at night, control birds found their way to their home nests before night was over, whereas anosmic birds did not home until the next day. A similar study that released Cory's shearwaters 800 km from their home nests, testing both magnetic and olfactory disturbances’ effects on navigation, found that anosmic birds took longer to home than magnetically disturbed or control birds.

Morphology and flight
Procellariiforms range in size from the very large wandering albatross, at 11 kg and a 3.6 m wingspan, to tiny birds like the least storm petrel, at 20 g with a 32 cm wingspan, and the smallest of the prions, the fairy prion, with a wingspan of 23 to 28 cm. Their nostrils are enclosed in one or two tubes on their straight deeply-grooved bills with hooked tips. The beaks are made up of several plates. Their wings are long and narrow; the feet are webbed, and the hind toe is undeveloped or non-existent; their adult plumage is predominantly black, white, and grey.

The order has a few unifying characteristics, starting with their tubular nasal passage which is used for olfaction. Procellariiformes that nest in burrows have a strong sense of smell, being able to detect dimethyl sulfide released from plankton in the ocean. This ability to smell helps to locate patchily distributed prey at sea and may also help locate their nests within nesting colonies. In contrast, surface nesting Procellariiformes have increased vision, having six times better spatial resolution than those that nest in burrows. The structure of the bill, which contains seven to nine distinct horny plates, is another unifying feature, although there are differences within the order. Petrels have a plate called the maxillary unguis that forms a hook on the maxilla. The smaller members of the order have a comb-like mandible, made by the tomial plate, for plankton feeding. Most members of the order are unable to walk well on land, and many species visit their remote breeding islands only at night. The exceptions are the huge albatrosses, several of the gadfly petrels and shearwaters and the fulmar-petrels. The latter can disable even large predatory birds with their obnoxious stomach oil, which they can project some distance. This stomach oil, stored in the proventriculus, is a digestive residue created in the foregut of all tubenoses except the diving petrels, and is used mainly for storage of energy-rich food during their long flights. The oil is also fed to their young, as well as being used for defense.

Procellariiforms drink seawater, so they have to excrete excess salt. All birds have an enlarged nasal gland at the base of the bill, above the eyes, and in the Procellariiformes the gland is active. In general terms, the salt gland removes salt from the system and forms a 5 percent saline solution that drips out of the nostrils, or is forcibly ejected in some petrels. The processes behind this involve high levels of sodium ion reabsorption into the blood plasma within the kidneys, and secretion of sodium chloride via the salt glands using less water than was absorbed, which essentially generates salt-free water for other physiological uses. This high efficiency of sodium ion absorption is attributed to mammalian-type nephrons.

Most albatrosses and procellariids use two techniques to minimise exertion while flying, namely, dynamic soaring and slope soaring. The albatrosses and giant petrels share a morphological adaptation to aid in flight, a sheet of tendon which locks the wing when fully extended, allowing the wing to be kept up and out without any muscle effort. Amongst the Oceanitinae storm-petrels there are two unique flight patterns, one being surface pattering. In this they move across the water surface holding and moving their feet on the water's surface while holding steady above the water, and remaining stationary by hovering with rapid fluttering or by using the wind to anchor themselves in place. A similar flight method is thought to have been used by the extinct petrel family Diomedeoididae. The white-faced storm petrel possesses a unique variation on pattering: holding its wings motionless and at an angle into the wind, it pushes itself off the water's surface in a succession of bounding jumps.

Diet and feeding
The procellariiforms are for the most part exclusively marine foragers; the only exception to this rule are the two species of giant petrel, which regularly feed on carrion or other seabirds while on land. While some other species of fulmarine and Procellaria petrels also take carrion, the diet of most species of albatrosses and petrels is dominated by fish, squid, krill and other marine zooplankton. The importance of these food sources varies from species to species and family to family. For example, of the two albatross species found in Hawaii, the black-footed albatross takes mostly fish, while the Laysan feeds mainly on squid. The albatrosses in general feed on fish, squid and krill. Among the procellariids, the prions concentrate on small crustacea, the fulmarine petrels take fish and krill but little squid, while the Procellaria petrels consume mainly squid. The storm petrels take small droplets of oil from the surface of the water, as well as small crustaceans and fish.

Petrels obtain food by snatching prey while swimming on the surface, snatching prey from the wing or diving down under the water to pursue prey. Dipping down from flight is most commonly used by the gadfly petrels and the storm petrels. There have been records of wedge-tailed shearwaters snatching flying fish from the air, but as a rule this technique is rare. Some diving birds may aid diving by beginning with a plunge from the air, but for the most part petrels are active divers and use their wings to move around under the water. The depths achieved by various species were determined in the 1990s and came as a surprise to scientists; short-tailed shearwaters have been recorded diving to 70 m and the Light-mantled sooty albatross to 12 m.

Breeding colonies
All procellariiforms are colonial, predominantly breeding on offshore or oceanic islands. The few species that nest on continents do so in inhospitable environments such as dry deserts or on Antarctica. These colonies can vary from the widely spaced colonies of the giant petrels to the dense 3.6 million-strong colonies of Leach's storm petrels. For almost all species the need to breed is the only reason that procellariiforms return to land at all. Some of the larger petrels have to nest on windswept locations as they require wind to take off and forage for food. Within the colonies, pairs defend usually small territories (the giant petrels and some albatrosses can have very large territories) which is the small area around either the nest or a burrow. Competition between pairs can be intense, as is competition between species, particularly for burrows. Larger species of petrels will even kill the chicks and even adults of smaller species in disputes over burrows. Burrows and natural crevices are most commonly used by the smaller species; all the storm petrels and diving petrels are cavity nesters, as are many of the procellariids. The fulmarine petrels and some tropical gadfly petrels and shearwaters are surface nesters, as are all the albatrosses.

Procellariiforms show high levels of philopatry, both site fidelity and natal philopatry. Natal philopatry is the tendency of an individual bird to return to its natal colony to breed, often many years after leaving the colony as a chick. This tendency has been shown through ringing studies and mitochondrial DNA studies. Birds ringed as chicks have been recaptured close to their original nests, sometimes extremely close; in the Laysan albatross the average distance between hatching site and the site where a bird established its own territory was 22 m, and a study of Cory's shearwaters nesting near Corsica found that nine out of 61 male chicks that returned to breed at their natal colony actually bred in the burrow they were raised in. Mitochondrial DNA provides evidence of restricted gene flow between different colonies, strongly suggesting philopatry.

The other type of philopatry exhibited is site fidelity, where pairs of birds return to the same nesting site for a number of years. Among the most extreme examples known of this tendency was the fidelity of a ringed northern fulmar that returned to the same nest site for 25 years. The average number of birds returning to the same nest sites is high in all species studied, with around 91 percent for Bulwer's petrels, and 85 percent of males and 76 percent of females for Cory's shearwaters (after a successful breeding attempt).

Pair bonds and life history
Procellariiforms are monogamous breeders and form long-term pair bonds. These pair bonds take several years to develop in some species, particularly with the albatrosses. Once formed, they last for many breeding seasons, in some cases for the life of the pair. Petrel courtship can be elaborate. It reaches its extreme with the albatrosses, where pairs spend many years perfecting and elaborating mating dances. These dances are composed of synchronised performances of various actions such as preening, pointing, calling, bill clacking, staring, and combinations of such behaviours (like the sky-call). Each particular pair will develop their own individual version of the dance. The breeding behaviour of other procellariiforms is less elaborate, although similar bonding behaviours are involved, particularly for surface-nesting species. These can involve synchronised flights, mutual preening and calling. Calls are important for helping birds locate potential mates and distinguishing between species, and may also help individuals assess the quality of potential mates. After pairs have been formed, calls serve to help them reunite; the ability of individuals to recognise their own mate has been demonstrated in several species.

Procellariiforms are K-selected, being long-lived and caring extensively for their few offspring. Breeding is delayed for several years after fledging, sometimes for as long as ten years in the largest species. Once they begin breeding, they make only a single breeding attempt per nesting season; even if the egg is lost early in the season, they seldom re-lay. Much effort is placed into laying a single (proportionally) large egg and raising a single chick. Procellariiforms are long-lived: the longest living albatross known survived for 51 years, but was probably older, and even the tiny storm-petrels are known to have survived for 30 years. Additionally, the oldest living bird is Wisdom, a female Laysan albatross.

Nesting and chick rearing
The majority of procellariiforms nest once a year and do so seasonally. Some tropical shearwaters, like the Christmas shearwater, are able to nest on cycles slightly shorter than a year, and the large great albatrosses (genus Diomedea) nest in alternate years (if successful). Most temperate and polar species nest over the spring-summer, although some albatrosses and procellariids nest over the winter. In the tropics, some species can be found breeding throughout the year, but most nest in discreet periods. Procellariiforms return to nesting colonies as much as several months before laying, and attend their nest sites regularly before copulation. Prior to laying, females embark on a lengthy pre-laying exodus to build up energy reserves in order to lay the exceptionally large egg. In the stormy petrel, a very small procellariiform, the egg can be 29 percent of the body weight of the female, while in the grey-faced petrel, the female may spend as much as 80 days feeding out at sea after courtship before laying the egg.

When the female returns and lays, incubation is shared between the sexes, with the male taking the first incubation stint and the female returning to sea. The duration of individual stints varies from just a few days to as much as several weeks, during which the incubating bird can lose a considerable amount of weight. The incubation period varies from species to species, around 40 days for the smallest storm-petrels but longer for the largest species; for albatrosses it can span 70 to 80 days, which is the longest incubation period of any bird.

Upon hatching, the chicks are semi-precocial, having open eyes, a dense covering of white or grey down feathers, and the ability to move around the nesting site. After hatching, the incubating adult remains with the chick for a number of days, a period known as the guard phase. In the case of most burrow-nesting species, this is only until the chick is able to thermoregulate, usually two or three days. Diving-petrel chicks take longer to thermoregulate and have a longer guard phase than other burrow nesters. However, surface-nesting species, which have to deal with a greater range of weather and to contend with predators like skuas and frigatebirds, consequently have a longer guard phase (as long as two weeks in procellariids and three weeks in albatrosses).

The chick is fed by both parents. Chicks are fed on fish, squid, krill, and stomach oil. Stomach oil is oil composed of neutral dietary lipids that are the residue created by digestion of the prey items. As an energy source for chicks it has several advantages over undigested prey, its calorific value is around 9.6 kcal per gram, which is only slightly lower than the value for diesel oil. This can be a real advantage for species that range over huge distances to provide food for hungry chicks. The oil is also used in defence. All procellariiforms create stomach oil except the diving-petrels.

The chick fledges between two and nine months after hatching, almost twice as long as a gull of the same body mass. The reasons behind the length of time are associated with the distance from the breeding site to food. First, there are few predators at the nesting colonies, therefore there is no pressure to fledge quickly. Second, the time between feedings is long due to the distance from the nest site that adults forage, thus a chick that had a higher growth rate would stand a better chance of starving to death. The duration between feedings vary among species and during the stages of development. Small feeds are frequent during the guard phase, but afterward become less frequent. However, each feed can deliver a large amount of energy; both sooty shearwater and mottled petrel chicks have been recorded to double their weight in a single night, probably when fed by both parents.

Role in culture
The most important family culturally is the albatrosses, which have been described by one author as "the most legendary of birds". Albatrosses have featured in poetry in the form of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which in turn gave rise to the usage of albatross as metaphor for a burden. More generally, albatrosses were believed to be good omens, and to kill one would bring bad luck. There are few instances of petrels in culture, although there are sailors' legends regarding the storm petrels, which are considered to warn of oncoming storms. In general, petrels were considered to be "soul birds", representing the souls of drowned sailors, and it was considered unlucky to touch them.

In the Russian language, many petrel species from the Hydrobatidae and Procellariidae families of the order Procellariiformes are known as burevestnik, which literally means 'the announcer of the storm'. When in 1901, the Russian writer Maxim Gorky turned to the imagery of subantarctic avifauna to describe Russian society's attitudes to the coming revolution, he used a storm-announcing petrel as the lead character of a poem that soon became popular in the revolutionary circles as "the battle anthem of the revolution". Although the species called "stormy petrel" in English is not one of those to which the burevestnik name is applied in Russian (it, in fact, is known in Russian as an entirely un-romantic kachurka), the English translators uniformly used the "stormy petrel" image in their translations of the poem, usually known in English as The Song of the Stormy Petrel.

Various tubenose birds are relevant to the mythologies and oral traditions of Polynesia. The Māori used the wing bones of the albatross to carve flutes. In Hawaiian mythology, Laysan albatrosses are considered aumakua, being a sacred manifestation of the ancestors, and quite possibly also the sacred bird of Kāne. The storm petrel features prominently in the "Origin of Birds" myth.

Exploitation

Albatrosses and petrels have been important food sources for humans for as long as people have been able to reach their remote breeding colonies. Amongst the earliest-known examples of this is the remains of shearwaters and albatrosses along with those of other seabirds in 5,000-year-old middens in Chile, although it is likely that they were exploited prior to this. Since then, many other marine cultures, both subsistence and industrial, have exploited procellariiforms, in some cases almost to extinction. Some cultures continue to harvest shearwaters (a practice known as muttonbirding); for example, the Māori of New Zealand use a sustainable traditional method known as kaitiakitanga. In Alaska, residents of Kodiak Island harpoon short-tailed albatrosses, Diomedea albatrus, and until the late 1980s residents of Tristan Island in the Indian Ocean harvested the eggs of the Yellow-nosed Mollymawks, Diomedea chlororhynchos, and sooty albatrosses, Phoebetria fusca. Albatrosses and petrels are also now tourist draws in some locations, such as Taiaroa Head. While such exploitation is non-consumptive, it can have deleterious effects that need careful management to protect both the birds and the tourism.

The English naturalist William Yarrell wrote in 1843 that "ten or twelve years ago, Mr. Gould exhibited twenty-four [storm petrels], in a large dish, at one of the evening meetings of the Zoological Society".

The engraver Thomas Bewick wrote in 1804 that "Pennant, speaking of those [birds] which breed on, or inhabit, the Isle of St Kilda, says—'No bird is of so much use to the islanders as this: the Fulmar supplies them with oil for their lamps, down for their beds, a delicacy for their tables, a balm for their wounds, and a medicine for their distempers.'" A photograph by George Washington Wilson taken about 1886 shows a "view of the men and women of St Kilda on the beach dividing up the catch of Fulmar". James Fisher, author of The Fulmar (1952) calculated that every person on St Kilda consumed over 100 fulmars each year; the meat was their staple food, and they caught around 12,000 birds annually. However, when the human population left St Kilda in 1930, the population did not suddenly grow.

Threats and conservation
The albatrosses and petrels are "amongst the most severely threatened taxa worldwide". They face a variety of threats, the severity of which varies greatly from species to species. Several species are among the most common of seabirds, including Wilson's storm petrel (an estimated 12 to 30 million individuals) and the short-tailed shearwater (23 million individuals); while the total population of some other species is a few hundred. There are less than 200 Magenta petrels breeding on the Chatham Islands, only 130 to 160 Zino's petrels and only 170 Amsterdam albatrosses. Only one species is thought to have become extinct since 1600, the Guadalupe storm petrel of Mexico, although a number of species had died out before this. Numerous species are very poorly known; for example, the Fiji petrel has rarely been seen since its discovery. The breeding colony of the New Zealand storm petrel was not located until February 2013; it had been thought extinct for 150 years until its rediscovery in 2003, while the Bermuda petrel had been considered extinct for nearly 300 years.

The principal threat to the albatrosses and larger species of procellariids is long-line fishing. Bait set on hooks is attractive to foraging birds and many are hooked by the lines as they are set. As many as 100,000 albatrosses are hooked and drown each year on tuna lines set out by long-line fisheries. Before 1991 and the ban on drift-net fisheries, it was estimated that 500,000 seabirds a year died as a result. This has caused steep declines in some species, as procellariiforms are extremely slow breeders and cannot replace their numbers fast enough. Losses of albatrosses and petrels in the Southern Ocean were estimated at between 1 percent and 16 percent per year, which these species cannot sustain for long.

Exotic species introduced to the remote breeding colonies threaten all types of procellariiform. These principally take the form of predators; most albatross and petrel species are clumsy on land and unable to defend themselves from mammals such as rats, feral cats and pigs. This phenomenon, ecological naivete, has resulted in declines in many species and was implicated in the extinction of the Guadalupe storm petrel. Already in 1910 Godman wrote:

"Owing to the introduction of the mongoose and other small carnivorous mammals into their breeding haunts, some species, such as Oestrelata jamaicensis and newelli, have already been completely exterminated, and others appear to be in danger of extinction."

Introduced herbivores may unbalance the ecology of islands; introduced rabbits destroyed the forest understory on Cabbage Tree Island off New South Wales, which increased the vulnerability of the Gould's petrels nesting on the island to natural predators, and left them vulnerable to the sticky fruits of the native birdlime tree (Pisonia umbellifera). In the natural state these fruits lodge in the understory of the forest, but with the understory removed the fruits fall to the ground where the petrels move about, sticking to their feathers and making flight impossible.

Exploitation has decreased in importance as a threat. Other threats include the ingestion of plastic flotsam. Once swallowed, plastic can cause a general decline in the fitness of the bird, or in some cases lodge in the gut and cause a blockage, leading to death by starvation. It can also be picked up by foraging adults and fed to chicks, stunting their development and reducing the chances of successfully fledging. Procellariids are also vulnerable to marine pollution, as well as oil spills. Some species, such as Barau's petrel, Newell's shearwater and Cory's shearwater, which nest high up on large developed islands, are victims of light pollution. Fledging chicks are attracted to streetlights and may then be unable to reach the sea. An estimated 20 to 40 percent of fledging Barau's petrels and 45 to 60 percent of fledging Cory's shearwater are attracted to the streetlights on Réunion and Tenerife, respectively.

title: Procellariiformes


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User:Levork

I'm a computer graphics software engineer at an animation studio in Emeryville, CA.

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User:Mjausson

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User:Nafai

A whist player and new wikipedian.

Welcome! -- LMS

This is a very fascinating experiement you have going here, guys. I'm all for collaborative (and very open) information efforts like this.

Well, here is a list of my interests.

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