870 THE SLENDER-BILLED SHEARWATER. 
No. 352. 
SLENDER-BILLED SHEARWATER. 
A. O. U. No. 06. Puffinus tenuirostris (‘Temm.). 
Description.—Adult (Dark phase?); General plumage sooty black, lighten- 
ing, sooty gray, below; chin whitish and a little white touch on lower eyelid; 
bill slender and weak. | Believed also to have a light phase.| Length about 14.00 
(355.6); wing 10.00 (254); tail 3.50 (88.9); bill 1.20 (30.5), depth at base .30 
(7.6); tarsus 1.90 (48.3). 
Recognition Marks.—Little Hawk size; to appearance a small Gull; generic 
marks as in preceding, smaller; weak bill. 
Nesting.— Vest and Eggs unknown,—doubtless much as in other species. 
General Range.—The Pacific Ocean, chiefly coastwise, north in summer to 
Kotzebue Sound; breeds in southern hemisphere and also very possibly on the 
Aleutians. : 
Range in Washington.—Summer and early fall visitor—sometimes abund- 
ant off West Coast—also of probable occurrence on the Straits. 
Authorities.—Bowles and Dawson, Auk, Vol. NXY. Oct. 1908, p. 485. 
Specimens.—l’rov. [. 
SOME time in May, and again during the fall migrations, there appears 
off the Washington Coast a rather small, black Shearwater, easily dis- 
tinguished from its larger and somewhat less sooty relative, the Dark-bodied 
Shearwater. This species, the Slender-billed Shearwater, presents a subject 
of more than passing interest to the student of pelagic ornithology. Its range 
extends from north of Bering Strait to the waters of New Zealand. It is 
found along the Aleutian Islands in flocks numbering thousands, during the 
spring and summer months, and along down the coast of North America, at 
least as far as Mexico, as late as December. Up to this time no nesting 
colonies have been discovered, except in the New Zealand waters; and some 
writers, reasoning upon this basis, have claimed that this species, as well as 
others of the genus Puffinus, retires to the Southern Hemisphere to nest,—a 
somewhat unsafe assertion in view of the hundreds of islands in the Aleutian 
chain yet imperfectly or not at all explored, any one of which might easily 
afford nesting grounds for the entire northern contingent. 
I have seen this species in November and December in the Straits of 
Juan de Fuca in flocks of thousands; but their occurrence so far inshore is 
uncertain, being dependent to a great extent upon the presence of the herring 
on which it feeds extensively. The fish are captured by diving, and the bird 
in pursuit literally flies under water with half extended wings. So gorged do 
the Shearwaters become, when a large run of herring is found, that they can 
