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FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



records of small land birds over the Gulf are just 

 the sort of records one should anticipate if trans- 

 Gulf migration is an important reality. Because 

 of the failure of recent fieldwork in eastern 

 Mexico to produce more than a few scattered 

 records of many migrants that are overwhelm- 

 ingly abundant in Texas, the volume of the flight 

 on the coast of Texas is regarded as evidence in 

 favor of trans-Gulf migration, rather than evi- 

 dence against it. Telescopic studies of the den- 

 sity and direction of night migrations leaving the 

 coast of Yucatan have shown that the over-all 

 trend of the flights is directed northwestward 

 toward the Texas coast in conformity with the 

 prevailing movement of the air masses in the 

 western Gulf. And finally, these same studies 

 have indicated that the flights are of major 

 proportions. 



This brief summary does not do full justice to 

 the arguments supporting either hypothesis. It 

 will serve, however, to indicate the main features 

 of the controversy and to emphasize the import- 

 ance of placing on record all future observations 

 of land birds on the open Gulf, with notes de- 

 scribing the surrounding weather conditions. 

 For a fuller understanding of the case for and 

 against trans-Gulf migration, reference may be 

 made to the following: WiUiams (1945, 1947, 

 1950, 1951); Lowery (1945, 1946, 1951); BuUis 

 and Lincoln (1952). 



Table 1 is an attempt to bring together all 

 records of the species of land birds that have been 

 identified over the waters of the Gulf at distances 

 a mile or more from the nearest coast. It is to 

 be hoped that this summary will stimulate addi- 

 tional observations of the same sort by providing 

 a background against which they may be eval- 

 uated. The data were drawn from the following 

 published or unpublished sources: Frazar (1881); 

 Helmuth (1920); the anonymous account (1927) 

 of observations on the S. S. West Quechee, desig- 

 nated as "W. Q." in the table; Griscom (1945); 

 Wilhams (1945); Lowery (1946), including, among 

 other records, the observations by J. C. Howell 

 and by persomiel of the U. S. C. G. Cutter Blanco 

 Dufresne (1947); Packard (1947 and in htt.) 

 Lowery 's unpublished notes for 1948 and 1949 

 Paynter (1951 and in litt.); observations made 

 by H. R. Bullis in 1950 and 1951, the latter in- 

 corporated in a paper by Bullis and Lincoln 

 (1952). The number of individuals when stated 

 is that recorded by the original observer, except 

 in the case of Frazar, where "the most abundant," 

 "very abundant," "abundant," "large numbers," 

 and "quite a number" are all referred to in the 

 table as "many." In order to condense the 

 material for tabular presentation scientific names of 

 species have been omitted except for the one species 

 that does not appear in the A. O. U. Check 

 List (1931) and has no standardized English name. 



Table 1. — Records of Land Birds Over the Open Gulf 



