262 ALEXANDER, AiistraUan Sea Birds. iTlt^l^rH 



I travelled to the annual conference of the R.A.O.U. in Syd- 

 ney by steamer from Brisbane, and, in spite of the very rough 

 weather experienced, was able to observe a number of sea- 

 birds. Whilst in Sydney, through the kindness of Mr. J. R. 

 Kinghorn, I examined the collection of Cormorants in the Aus- 

 tralian museum. Unfortunately the continuous sessions of the 

 Union and the Check-list Committee left me no time to look 

 at certain other specimens which I had hoped to see. 



The notes obtained on these several voyages, with some scat- 

 tered observations on birds seen on the east coast in New South 

 Wales and Queensland, and the s])ecimens in the three museums 

 mentioned will, I think, add a little to our knowledge of Aus- 

 tralian sea-birds and their distribution, and as regards Tubin- 

 ares, supplement mv article in TJie Emu, vol. xx., pp. 14-24 and 

 66-74. 



Eudyptula minor. Little Penguin. — A specimen captured at 

 Coolangatta, Queensland, just north of the New South Wales 

 border on May 15th, 1920, is in the Queensland Museum. The 

 capture was recorded by Mr. Longman in the Memoirs of the 

 Queensland Museum, vol. 7, but has not, I think, been pre- 

 viously mentioned in The Bniu. New South Wales ornitholo- 

 gists consider that the bird is extending northwards in that 

 State, and it is interesting to note that a pioneer has j ust man- 

 aged to reach Queensland, where it suffered a fate which is not 

 uncommonly the lot of pioneers. 



Oceanites oceanica. WiUon Storm Petrel. — In The Emu, vol. 

 xxi., p. 191, Mr. Cami)bell records that Mr. McLennan saw 

 numbers of Storm Petrels near Cape York on July 7th and 8th, 

 1921, which he thought were of this species. Mr. Campbell 

 adds: "Considering the latitude, I think this is doubtful." While 

 agreeing with Mr. Campbell's further remark that it is a great 

 pity specimens could not be collected to .settle the point, it seems 

 to me highly probably that Mr. McLennan's suggestion is cor- 

 rect. Dr. R. C. Murphy has shown conclusively, in a paper en- 

 titled "A Study of the Atlantic Oceanites," in The Bulletin of 

 the American Museum of Natural History, vol. xxxviii., p. 117, 

 that this species, after breeding in the Antarctic regions south 

 of the Atlantic, regularly migrates through the tropics mto the 

 North Atlantic, reaching as far north as the British Isles and 

 Labrador, and being common from May to Sejitember on the 

 Atlantic coasts of the United States. Whilst in a ]>ai^er on 

 birds of the South Atlantic in The .luk, vol. xxxi., ]>. 439, the 

 same author records seeing them almost every day in numbers 

 in a voyage to South Georgia in October and N(nember, and 

 on the return voyage in March and April right up to New York. 

 I saw specimens, which I feel confident were of this species, 

 in April, 1920, in the tropical Atlantic on both sides of the 

 Equator. 



