GULF OF MEXICO 



525 



Audubon on Florida Keys in April ; specimen taken 

 in Bay of Florida, April 26, 1903; seen at Palma 

 Sola, Florida, November 5, 1909, and December 

 11, 1911; seen in northern Gulf in March and 

 April (Moore 1951, p. 13); several seen 90 to 158 

 miles at sea north of Progreso, January 10 and 11, 

 1951 (Bullis, in litt.). Additional observations, 

 by Lovvery (unpublished notes) , believed referable 

 to the present species, are: one seen 28 miles 

 south, and nine seen 56 miles south of Southwest 

 Pass, Louisiana, on April 21, 1948; four seen near 

 mid-Gulf on April 22; one seen 101 miles south of 

 the Louisiana coast on May 2. There are no 

 definite spring records after this date, though two 

 probable parasitic jaegers were observed at Pen- 

 sacola on June 17, 1951. 



Long- tailed Jaeger Stercorarius longicaudus. 



An arctic species ranging south in winter barely 

 to the Gulf. The records are mostly from the 

 extreme eastern part of the Gulf or its environs: 

 one collected at Marco in the winter of 1884; one 

 seen at Passage Key, Tampa Bay, on numerous 

 dates between June 14 and 30, 1910, one noted on 

 Matecumbe Key, February 27, 1929. In addition, 

 the long-tailed jaeger has been reported from the 

 northern part of the Gulf on March 9 and April 

 6 (Moore 1951, p. 14), and has been taken at 

 Matanzas Bay, Cuba, on November 29. 



Kittiwake Rissa tridactyla. 



The only evidence for the occurrence of this 

 oceanic gull in the Gulf itself is Audubon's indefi- 

 nite record for the Florida Kej's. There is, how- 

 ever, a January specimen from the vicinity of 

 Havana, Cuba. 



Sooty Tern Sterna juscata. 



Breeds widely on islands of the Gulf: Areas 

 Keys, Alacran Reef, and the Dry Tortugas. In 

 addition, a female incubating an egg was noted 

 on a little island outside of Tampa Bay, May 25, 

 1949 (Nicholson 1950, p. 71); two females that 

 had an egg and behaved like a mated pair were 

 collected in 1933 on Curlew Island, in the Chande- 

 leur group off the coast of Louisiana; and a nest 

 was reported June 5, 1938, in the Corpus Chi-isti, 

 Texas, area, where the species is said to have 

 nested in numbers prior to 1895. The best known 

 colony is that on the Dry Tortugas which has 

 grown from an estimated 3,600 birds in 1903 to 



an estimated 120,000 birds in 1950 (Dilley 1950, 

 p. 67). The birds generally arrive there in Feb- 

 ruary and depart in September. Despite the 

 size of this colony, there have been relatively few 

 modern records from the Gulf mainland. In the 

 past decade, for instance, the species has been 

 reported there only six times: three occasions in 

 August and September in the vicinity of Pensacola; 

 June 26, 1949, in Bay County, Florida (Hallman, 

 in litt.); October 4, 1949, at Cove, Texas; and 

 near Port Isabel, Texas, May 6, 1948 (Cruick- 

 shank 1949, pp. 111-112). The Tortugas were 

 the scene of a famous series of experiments with 

 this species and the noddy tern by Watson and 

 Lashley between 1907 and 1913, which demon- 

 strated the great ability of the sooty tern to 

 "home" but showed that this species cannot long 

 remain in the water without drowning. 



Bridled Tern Sterna anaethetus. 



A tropical tern breeding as near to the Gulf as 

 Cayo Mono Grande, Cuba. Half the Gulf records 

 (Sprunt, 1951a, p. 59, 1951b, p. 223) are near the 

 Florida Keys or the Dry Tortugas: one banded 

 in the Bay of Florida, October 2, 1940; one taken 

 at the Marquesas Keys, July 9, 1938; one seen at 

 New Ground Shoal, 25 miles east of the Dry 

 Tortugas, June 21, 1946; one taken at Fort Jeffer- 

 son, September 7, 1949. The species has also been 

 reported 90 miles west of Tampa, date imspecified 

 (Packard, 1947, p. 131); at Alligator Point, Flor- 

 ida, August 31, 1950 (a count of six) ; at Pensacola, 

 Florida, December 29, 1945 (specimen preserved); 

 and 10 miles south of Foley, Alabama, September 

 2, 1932, when six birds were seen (Edwards, 1933, 

 p. 105). 



Noddy Tern Anous stolidus. 



Breeds on Contoy Island and on the Dry Tor- 

 tugas, where it has arrived at least as early as 

 March 26. The Tortugas colony has variously 

 accommodated from 400 (in 1903) to 622 (in 1950) 

 birds (Dilley 1950, p. 68). Most of the fishing 

 of this species is said to be done within about 10 

 miles of the island. Consequently, the noddy tern 

 is less often seen from the mainland even than the 

 sooty tern. We know of oidy two records in this 

 century of its occurrence on the Gulf coast: a few 

 seen in Tampa Bay in July 1923; one collected 

 August 30, 1942, at Sabine Wildlife Refuge, Louisi- 

 ana (Atwood, 1943, pp. 454-455). However, four 



