SEA-BIRD MOVEMENTS I4I 



on 10 November 1948 near Wilderness in Eastern Cape Province, 

 South Africa. One marked on 18 July 1948 was picked up dead 

 towards the end of September of the same year on the hills near 

 Kylestrome in West Sutherland, Scotland. 



Two of the young arctic terns hatched in Disko Bay, West Green- 

 land, have been recovered. One ringed in July 1947 was collected 

 a year later on the shore of James Bay, Ontario, where it was occupying 

 a small ternery as a non-breeder. The other, ringed on 7 August 1949, 

 was recovered in Gloucestershire on 20 October of the same year. One 

 British nestling marked in Northern Ireland on 13 June 1941 was recov- 

 ered at Lobito, Angola, in the south-west of Africa in February 1942. 



The latest West Greenland arctic tern recovery involves the longest 

 journey of any bird ever recorded by ringing. A juvenile ringed at 

 Ikamiut in the Christianshab district on 8 July 1951 was recovered 

 newly dead in Durban Harbour, Natal, South Africa, on 30 October 

 of the same year. It had flown over eleven thousand miles in less 

 than three months after first taking wing. 



These add up to an Atlantic crossing of at least some of the North 

 American elements, and to a northward penetration into the Indian 

 Ocean once the birds have rounded the Cape (Fig. 23, p. 142). But 

 though we now know that some of these corner-turners reach Mada- 

 gascar, we are also now quite sure that large numbers continue from 

 the south Atlantic on to the Antarctic; and that some, also, do not 

 cross the Atlantic first, but pass down, and off, the coasts of Brazil 

 and the Argentine to this goal. Many ornithologists have been, quite 

 properly, hesitant about accepting the arctic tern records in the 

 Antarctic — particularly in view of the chance of confusion of sight 

 (and even some specimen) records with the two southern breeding 

 species. Sterna vittata, the antarctic tern, and S. hirundi?iacea, the South 

 American tern. However, the facts are now accepted by such critical 

 workers as R. C. Murphy, and have been abundantly augmented in 

 the season 1946-47 by ^V. H. Bierman, an experienced ornithologist 

 who was ship's surgeon to the Dutch whaling-ship Willem Barendsz- 

 (Bierman and Voous, 1950). Some of the certain observ^ations of 

 arctic terns round the Antarctic Continent, and in the oceans and lands 

 between it and the breeding-grounds of this extraordinary^ bird, are 

 plotted on fig. 22. The birds particularly inhabit the pack-ice and 

 the neighbourhood of bergs, and feed in the 'leads' and near the bergs, 

 where whale-krill (particularly Euphausia) is plentiful, in much the 

 same way as they do in the Arctic. 



