It breeds in small, loose colonies of 10-50 pairs in burrows on steep, vegetated slopes on New Caledonia between 350 and 650 m, and among rocks and debris of cabbage tree palm Livistona australis or in rock scree on exposed slopes in Australia (Priddel and Carlile 1997a,b, V. Bretagnolle in litt. 1999, 2000, Bretagnolle in Brooke 2004, Carlile et al. 2012, 2013, 2015). During breeding, it feeds mainly cephalopods, fish and crustaceans (McGee et al. submitted), taken in the Tasman Sea and in the waters off southern Australia (Priddel et al. 2014). Banded adult birds have lived to more than 40 years of age (D. Priddel in litt. 2012).

Pterodroma leucoptera only breeds in Australia and New Caledonia (to France). A small colony on Raivavae, Austral Islands, French Polynesia (V. Bretagnolle in litt. 1999, 2000, 2016) is closer to P. brevipes than to P. leucoptera. While the two main sub populations in New Caledonia (P. l. caledonica) and Australia (P. l. leucoptera) are similar genetically, they have strong ecological distinctiveness in foraging distribution, winter distribution, breeding phenology and breeding distribution (Iglesias-V et al. 2017). In Australia, P. leucoptera breeds on Cabbage Tree (0.3 km²) and adjacent Boondelbah (0.1 km²) Islands. It has also been recently found to breed on at least three sites on Broughton Island (1.3 km²) (Carlile et al. 2012) and Little Broughton Island (0.3 km²) (Carlile et al. 2013), 12 km northeast of Cabbage Tree and two sites 435 km south of Cabbage Tree on Montague Island (0.8 km²) (Fullagar et al. 2013) and Tollgates (0.1 km²) (Carlile et al. 2014). On Cabbage Tree, population estimates indicated a decline from 2,004 birds in 1970 to 1,157 in 1993 (Priddel and Carlile 1997b). However, conservation action undertaken since 1993 has seen the number of nesting pairs increase annually from fewer than 250 to c.1,025 in 2001, and numbers appear to be currently stable between 800-1000 pairs (Priddel and Carlile 2007, 2009). Following a translocation programme in 1999, approximately 50 pairs breed on Boondelbah (Priddel et al. 2006, D. Priddel in litt. 2012). In New Caledonia, one main breeding site of caledonica of 2,000-5,000 pairs is known on Mts Dzumac, another smaller breeding site (size unknown) occurs on south-eastern Dzumacs, and calling birds were found near Poya. Based on sightings at sea off New Caledonia, there may be c.1,000-10,000 pairs in total, although more colonies may lie undiscovered in isolated massifs on New Caledonia (Meeth and Meeth 1983, Bretagnolle and Thomas 1990, V. Bretagnolle in litt. 1999, 2000, Bretagnolle in Brooke 2004, V. Bretagnolle in litt. 2007). Petrels known historically from Vanuatu (still extant at least on Erromango and Tanna) are not this species, but P. brevipes (V. Bretagnolle in litt. 2016). Australian birds and New Caledonian birds disperse in different areas of central Pacific, with some birds even found western Australia (Rayner et al. 2014). Three individuals have been sighted over the waters around Fiji (T. Pyn in litt. 2008), and four around the Windward Islands (Champeau 2010). Non-breeders forage in the Southern Ocean as far south as the Antarctic coast (D. Priddel in litt. 2012). Recent tracking studies have revealed that during the non-breeding season, both subspecies migrate across the Pacific, but use different migration routes and over-winter in different regions of the ocean; leucoptera in the central Pacific south of Hawaii, and caledonia in the Eastern Pacific west of Ecuador (Priddel et al.2014).