864 THE SHORT-TAILED A LBATROSS. 
November and is not hatched till February. The young require to be fed for 
six months before venturing abroad, so that it is not until the 1st of Septem- 
ber that the hard-working parents may take a two months’ vacation.* 
It is, therefore, on account of the exactions of family cares upon the 
adults that immature birds, or “brown goonies,” are much more frequently 
seen upon the high seas. 
No. 348. 
SHORT-TAILED ALBATROSS. 
A. O. U. No. 82. Diomedea albatrus Pall. 
Description.—Adult: Body plumage white; head and neck white, more or 
less washed, especially behind, with tawny yellow; wings and tail sooty gray or 
dusky, with admixture of white in varying proportions ; exposed portions of flight 
feathers and rectrices chiefly dusky; no re-entrance of feathers on sides of 
mandible; outline of feathering at base of bill nearly even on culmen and sides; 
bill pale reddish yellow; feet livid flesh-color, or pale bluish, drying darker. 
Young: Entire plumage sooty brown, lighter (inclining to sooty gray) on chin 
and belly. Length of adult about 3 feet (914.4); wing 20.00 (508); tail 5.75 
(146.1) bill 5.00-6.00 (127-152.4) in length, 2.00 (50.8) in depth at base; outline 
of culmen concave. 
Recognition Marks.—Eagle size; white plumage, large beak of adult; nearly 
uniform sooty plumage of young bird without white “face” (but chin whitish). 
Nesting.—Does not nest in Washington. Breeds in colonies, laying its 
single equal-ended white egg upon the bare ground. Av. size of egg, 4.25 x 2.60 
(108 x 66.1). Season: Noy.-Dec.? 
General Range.—The North Pacific Ocean; of regular occurrence, save in 
breeding season, off the coasts of western North America to California, and 
eastern Asia to Japan. 
Range in Washington.—As above; also casual on the Straits of Juan de 
Fuca. 
Authorities.—D. brachyura, Temm., Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. Surv. TX. 1858, 
p. 822. C&S. E. 
Specimens.—(U. of W.) Prov. BN. 
THIS species is rather more common off our shores than the last-named, 
being usually the first of the Goonies to join out-bound vessels at the entrance 
a. “Ry Executive Order No. toto, dated February 3, 1900, the “Hawaiian Islands Reservation’ was 
establisht. This national bird preserve includes Laysan, Necker, and adjacent small islands, upon which 
great numbers of pelagic birds nest, such as Albatrosses, Shearwaters, and Terns. Persistent rumors have 
circulated in the newspapers of late, to the effect that Japanese were planning to land on the rookeries 
to destroy every bird obtainable, the feathers to be saved for various commercial purposes and the bodies 
to be made into fertilizer. The fact that not a few species, which are confined in the breeding scason to 
these small islands would thus be exterminated, makes the establishment of this preserve with littl doubt 
the most important step, from a strictly ornithological standpoint, in the history of bird preservation in 
this country. The annihilation of species was threatened” (The Condor, March, 1909). 
