STRUCTURE AND SEA-BIRDS OF THE N. ATLANTIC 29 



by the hurricane of August 1933, and possibly this close Atlantic relative of the 

 Kermadec petrel may cross the equator fairly often, as it breeds on South Trinidad 

 Island (only), which is fourteen hundred miles south of the equator, surely no very 

 great distance for a petrel. One collared petrel Pterodroma leucoptera, a Pacific species, 

 was shot between Borth and Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire, Wales, at the end of 

 November or the beginning of December 1889. The last wandering tubenose is the 

 black-bellied storm-petrel Fregetta tropica, a sub-antarctic species which was first 

 collec ted off the coast of Sierra Leone and has also been taken in Florida. It seems 

 likely that this last species may cross the equator fairly regularly, at least as far as 

 the Tropic of Cancer. 



One Pelecaniform wanderer has crossed the equator into the North Atlantic from 

 South Africa — the Cape gannet Sula capemis, which may reach north to the Canaries. 



From the western United States the California gull Larus californicus (which may 

 be a race of the herring-gull, see p. 38) winters fairly regularly to Texas, and thus 

 (in our definition) to the North Atlantic region. Another gull which enters the North 

 Atlantic, from more distant breeding-grounds, is the great black-headed gull, 

 Larus ichthyaetus of the Black Sea and farther east, which has reached Madeira and 

 Belgium and has been seen in Britain about eight times. 



Four exotic terns have wandered into the North Atlantic. The South American 

 Trudeau's tern Sterna trudeaui, has once reached New Jersey. On the east side 

 Sterna balaenarum, the Damara tern of South Africa, has migrated across the equator 

 as far as Lagos in Nigeria. Thalasseus bergiiy the swift tern, breeds on the west coast 

 of South Africa north to Walvis Bay, whence occasional individuals may sometimes 

 pass north across the equator. The elegant tern Thalasseus elegans, of the Gulf of 

 California, has accidentally reached Texas. And finally Gygis alba, the tropical, 

 white, almost 'transparent' fairy tern breeds north in the Atlantic to Fernando 

 Noronha, and therefore probably occasionally operates across the two hundred 

 miles that would bring it to the North Atlantic, though there is so far no formal 

 record of this. It has a wide distribution in all tropical seas, but is very much attached 

 to, and does not often fly far from, its breeding-grounds; nevertheless R. C. Murphy 

 (1936) ponders: 'Since there are seasons when powerful southeast trade winds blow 

 from Fernando Noronha across the equator almost as far as the mouth of the River 

 Orinoco, speculation offers me no clue as to why Gygis has not succeeded in jumping 

 the next gap and establishing itself in the West Indies.' 



The remaining wanderers are from the North Pacific — auks from that cradle 

 of the sub-order of auks. Aethia pusilla, the least auklet, has not actually reached the 

 Atlantic, but one was found 'halfway' from the Pacific to the Atlantic, in the Mackenzie 

 delta in May 1927. The ancient murrelet Synthliboramphus antiquus hdi&hQQnionnd three 

 times in the Great Lakes area, but no farther east. Aethia psittacula, the paroquet 

 auklet,* has actually reached the Atlantic by turning up in, of all places, 

 Sweden: in December i860 one was captured in Lake Vattern! If the least auklet 

 has not reached the Atlantic, its congener Aethia cristatella, the crested auklet, has, 

 for even if we reject (as most do) the alleged Massachusetts record, we must accept 

 that of 15 August 1 91 2 when one was shot north-east of Iceland. Finally Lunda 

 cirrhata, the tufted puffin, was obtained by the great naturalist Audubon in Maine: 

 other records from the Bay of Fundy and Greenland are erroneous. 



*Ludwig Kumlien (1879) may possibly have seen this species off North Labrador, 

 see Finn Salomonsen (1944). 



