Sea-Birds. James Fisher

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СКАЧАТЬ more common than the Northern Atlantic shearwater in our seas; indeed, the Mediterranean race of the latter P. d. diomedea, and Cory’s race P. d. borealis, have each only once been taken ashore in Britain, although birds which may have been of Cory’s subspecies have several times been seen at the entrance of the Channel. The only Scottish record is of one, seen at sea close to Aberdeen on 10 September 1947, by R. N. Winnall. Normally as Wynne-Edwards and Rankin and Duffey have shown, Puffinus diomedea does not get much farther north in the Atlantic than 50°N., and that at about 30°W. It is much more common on the North American coast than on that of Britain, although this coast is much farther from its base; ‘they seem to arrive on our coasts early in August,’ writes Bent, ‘and spend the next three months with us, mainly between Cape Cod and Long Island Sound.’ The Tristan great shearwater also probably reaches its greatest abundance on the North American coast, particularly in the area of the Newfoundland Banks, where it is known as the ‘hagdon’; from here it extends every season along the coast of Labrador to Greenland;—it has been recorded near Iceland.

      The other southern hemisphere shearwater that regularly visits North Atlantic waters is Puffinus griseus, the sooty shearwater. It is much rarer than the Tristan great shearwater, though it has been seen in British waters regularly enough to be classed as an autumn visitor. It breeds in New Zealand and its islands, in southern South America and its islands, and the Falkland Islands (in places many miles inland), and ranges the Pacific as well as the Atlantic; its Atlantic population is low compared with that of the other southern shearwater. Unlike the Tristan great shearwater, it probably makes its way into the North Sea by the Channel; and it is regular in small numbers in the Western approaches. At Rockall on 17 May 1949 J.F. saw none, but from 18 to 27 June 1948 R.M.L. found them always present there, singly and up to eight together, that is in the proportion of about one to a hundred hagdons. On the Newfoundland Banks, where it is in the same proportion, the fishermen called it the haglet. It reaches Greenland and Icelandic waters, and has been seen once as far north as Bear Island.

      The storm-petrel from the south is Wilson’s petrel Oceanites oceanicus, which nests in vast numbers in the antarctic continent and on the southern islands of South Shetland, South Orkney, South Georgia, Falkland, Tierra del Fuego and Kerguelen. It disperses into, and across, the Equator in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Wilson’s petrel has been the subject of an exhaustive monograph by Brian Roberts (1940), who mapped the dispersal in the Atlantic month by month (Fig. 29). Records north of the Equator are only irregular and sporadic between November and March, but in April the species is spread widely over the western half of the North Atlantic as far as Cape Cod. In May the petrels spread eastwards reaching from Cape Cod across the Atlantic towards Portugal and the Bay of Biscay, off which there is quite a concentration in June. By July there is a band of Wilson’s petrels across the whole North Atlantic with its northern border at about 40°N., but not reaching Britain. In August the eastern Atlantic petrels disappear, though on the west a concentration remains with its nucleus near Long Island Sound; and this persists in reduced population in September, by which time most Wilson’s petrels are making their way home. In September they reappear again off Portugal, and the homeward stream in October runs south along the north-west coast of Africa, continues its line across the Atlantic to the corner of Brazil, and carries on mainly down the east coast of South America; in November and December the concentration is at its greatest in the triangle Rio de Janeiro-South Georgia-Cape Horn.

      There are only about ten records for this abundant and successful species, in Britain. It does not normally reach our islands, though elements cannot be within much more than a few hundred miles of Cornwall in June and July. Most of the British records are between October and December—suggesting young non-breeding birds, inexperienced in the ways of wind and wave.

      Among the two dozen casual sea-bird visitors to the North Atlantic undoubtedly the most exciting are the kings of the tubenoses—the albatrosses, whose occurences in the North-Atlantic-Arctic are really monuments not so much to the fact that from time to time the best-adapted birds make mistakes and get right out of their range, as to the extraordinary powers of endurance and flight of the world’s greatest oceanic birds. Five albatrosses have strayed into the North Atlantic, four of the genus Diomedea, which includes the largest kinds, and one Phoebetria. All breed in the southern regions of the southern hemisphere.

      The most frequent in occurrence has been the black-browed albatross D. melanophris, of which we can trace nine records. The first of these is astonishing; on 15 June 1878, north-west of Spitsbergen and north of latitude 80°N., the whaler-skipper David Gray shot one that is now in the Peterhead Museum; it was farther north than the species ever gets south, even though it nests to latitude 55°S. Another northerly record is from West Greenland, and others have been shot south-west of the Faeroes and in the Oslo Fjord, Norway; one is even alleged to have reached Oesel in the Baltic. In 1860 (Andersen 1894) a female black-browed albatross turned up among the gannets of Mýkinesholmur in Faeroe, and came to the cliff every season with them until 11 May 1894, when it was shot by P. F. Petersen. For many years the only British record was of one which was caught exhausted in a field near Linton, Cambridgeshire, on 9 July 1897; but on 14 May 1949 an immature albatross which was probably of this species was seen at the Fair Isle, between Orkney and Shetland. It was first noticed soaring off the south face of the Sheep Craig, the famous landmark on the east side of the island, and obligingly glided over George Waterston, G. Hughes-Onslow and W. P. Vicary, who got a fine view of it (Williamson 1950, 1950b). Further, in September 1952 one was picked up alive in Derbyshire (Edmunds, 1952; Serventy, Clancey and Elliott, 1953).

      No other albatross has been certainly seen in Britain: a record of the yellow-nosed albatross from the Lincolnshire-Nottinghamshire boundary on 25 November 1836 is not admitted to the British list. This species, D. chlororhynchos, has been certainly obtained, however, in south Iceland, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence river, in the Bay of Fundy (New Brunswick), and in Oxford County, Maine. A record of D. chrysostoma from Bayonne in France^* may possibly refer to this species, for D. chlororhynchos and D. chrysostoma are extremely similar, and almost impossible to distinguish in the field. D. chrysostoma, the grey-headed albatross, has, however, certainly been recorded once in the North Atlantic—from South Norway in 1837 (or 1834). The light-mantled sooty albatross Phoebetria palpebrata, a relatively small species which breeds on sub-antarctic islands, has been recorded from Dunkirk, France^*. The greatest of all the albatrosses, the wandering albatross Diomedea exulans, has been taken, in France (Dieppe), Belgium (Antwerp) and on the Atlantic coast of Morocco; this magnificent animal has a wingspread up to 11¹⁄₂ feet and may weigh seventeen pounds or more; we can imagine the excitement of those humans who encountered these South Atlantic wanderers on their North Atlantic wanderings!

      Sometimes these wanderings may end in queer places; for instance, F. J. Stubbs (1913) found an albatross that he judged to be D. exulans hanging among the turkeys of Christmas 1909 in a game-dealer’s shop in Leadenhall Market. When he saw it ‘the bird appeared quite fresh, and bright red blood was dripping from its beak.’ There was no indication whence it had been obtained.

      Unidentified albatrosses have been seen at sea west of Spitsbergen on 2 May 1885, by the Captain David Gray who shot the 1878 black-browed albatross; off the mouth of Loch Linnhe, West Highlands of Scotland, in the autumn of 1884 by W. Rothschild; and twenty miles north-west of Orkney on 18 July 1894, by J. A. Harvie-Brown (1895).

      Apart from the three regular non-breeding summer visitors and the albatrosses, at least six other tubenoses have wandered into the North Atlantic from the South, or from the Pacific. The Cape pigeon Daption capensis, has been recorded from France^*, Holland and Maine, but the three British records have been rejected from the official list on the grounds that sailors have been known to liberate captured specimens in the Channel. Quite probably they are valid. СКАЧАТЬ