ish, on 21 October 1972 (Purrington 1973a, Lowery 1974). 



Texas Oberholser (1974) listed 18 Texas records (including 4 of the Black 

 Brant), that span nearly a century; most are from the Gulf coast counties. A 

 more recent report is of one that was seen at Aransas Refuge, 2 January 1976 

 (Webster 1976). 



SYNOPSIS OF PRESENT DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE 



Breeding The Brant breeds in the northern Holarctic between 83°N and 63°N. 

 It nests circumpolarly on arctic islands and coasts ( BOU 1971) and is one of the 

 northernmost breeding birds in the world (Bellrose 1976). 



The size of the breeding population in both the New and Old Worlds is poor- 

 ly known. One of the largest known breeding populations occurs on the outer 

 Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta; Bellrose (1976) thought it might contain about 75,000 

 breeding Brant. 



Winter Bellrose (1976) indicated that an average of about 217,000 Brant 

 wintered in North America through the early 1970's; about 140,000 of them along 

 the Pacific coast, the rest along the Atlantic. He also pointed out that the 

 Brant along the Pacific coast were shifting their wintering range southward, re- 

 sulting in a great increase in the number wintering on the mainland coast of 

 Mexico. Bellrose reported that the number increased from 1,400 in 1949 to 

 41,300 in 1967. This trend apparently continued. The 1975 winter waterfowl 

 survey found 115,340 (Goldsberry et al. 1980) wintering along the west coast of 

 Mexico. This figure represents about 54% of all Brant counted on the January 

 survey of North American waterfowl, and about 93% of those counted along the 

 Pacific coast. About 146,470 wintered along the Pacific coast during the win- 

 ter of 1976-77 (Ogilvie 1978). Another 100 winter in British Columbia (Bellrose 

 1976), and up to 5,000 may winter in Cold Bay and Izembeck Lagoon in Alaska 

 (Palmer 1976a); both areas are north of those covered by the January survey 

 (Bellrose 1976). 



Bellrose (1976) reported that most (150,000) of the average population win- 

 tering in the Atlantic (177,000) wintered in New Jersey, with other substantial 

 wintering populations present in the bays of Long Island, New York (25,000) and 

 Virginia (8,000); only a few hundred winter in the states to the south. 



Atlantic Brant numbers fluctuate dramatically in response to varying 

 weather conditions on the breeding grounds and availability of food in winter 

 (Bellrose 1976). Populations in the Atlantic Flyway were about 87,600 in 1974 

 (Bellrose 1976) and about 88,500 in 1975 (Goldsberry et al. 1980). 



The 1976 winter survey (Larned et al. 1980) reported a larger wintering 

 population (ca. 249,000), but the distribution of this population remained much 

 the same. The largest numbers (122,100) wintered off Mexico, and the next two 

 largest populations occurred in New Jersey (99,000) and New York (17,000). 

 Virginia (6,900) and Washington (7,500) also had relatively large wintering 

 populations. In the winter of 1976-1977, Atlantic Brant numbered about 115,400. 

 The severe winter resulted in mass starvation and less than 40,000 survived 

 into the spring (Ogilvie 1978). 



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