TOWNSEND AND WETMORE: THE BIRDS. 157 



It may also linger to enjoy its liberty with other frigate birds. At 

 home it is usually tethered to its perch. 



Mr. Louis Becke says they were used as letter carriers on the Samoan 

 Islands when he was there in 1882, carrying messages between islands 

 sixty or eighty miles apart. When he lived on Nanomaga in the 

 Ellice Islands, he exchanged two tame frigate birds with a trader 

 living on Nuitao, sixty miles distant, for a tame pair reared on that 

 island. The four birds at liberty frequently passed from one island 

 to the other on their own account, all going together on visits to each 

 other's homes, where they were fed by the natives on their old perches. 

 Mr. Becke's pair usually returned to him within from twenty-four to 

 thirty-six hours. He tested the speed of the "frigate" by sending 

 one of his birds by vessel to Nuitao where it was liberated with a 

 message at half-past four in the afternoon. Before six o'clock of the 

 same day the bird was back on its own perch at Nanomaga, accom- 

 panied by two of the Nuitao birds, which not being at their perch on 

 that island when it was liberated, it had evidently picked up on its 

 way home. 



The tame frigate bird returns regularly to its home perch at night. 

 The use of the frigate bird as a carrier is referred to by the Rev. Dr. 

 George Turner in Samoa a Hundred Years Ago, page 282. 



The Albatross did not anchor at Akiaki, but I made a hasty 

 landing 30 October, obtaining specimens of a warbler {Conopodcras 

 ati/pha rava), new. This island, also called Les Lanciers and Thrum 

 Cap, is less than a mile in diameter. It has no lagoon, is wooded and 

 is higher than the atolls. 



On the 31 October the vessel reached Pinaki or Whitsunday Atoll, 

 but no anchorage was found and my own boat was the only one that 

 suceeded in making a landing through the dangerous waves that beat 

 upon the reefs. This wonderful circular atoll, which has often been 

 figured in works on geography, is ^a mile and a half in diameter, and is 

 well forested, especially with cocoanut and Pandanus. There is a 

 single shallow entrance to the enclosed shallow lagoon. The only 

 birds obtained were a warbler {Conopoderas atypha rava) and a single 

 sandpiper {Aechnorhynchus parvirostris) , one other being seen. The 

 latter species was not observed elsewhere and the only other specimens 

 known are those obtained by Peale on islands of the Paumotu Group. 

 Landings at Pinaki are difficult and the atoll is uninhabited. This 

 was the last island of the Paumotus on which birds were collected. 



Although I made a landing on Here-here-tue 3 November, no land 

 birds were seen. 



