UFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN PETRELS AND PELICANS. 47 



of the Columbia Kiver. Its habits are very similar to those of 

 Procellaria capeTisis, keeping constantly around the vessel, and fre- 

 quently alighting in her wake for the purpose of feeding. They 

 are easily taken with a hook baited with pork, and at times, par- 

 ticularly during a gale, they are so tame as almost to allow them- 

 selves to be taken with the hand. The stomachs of most of those 

 that I captured were found to contain a species of sepia and grease." 

 Audubon referred to it as " common," but no other living specimens 

 have ever been recorded from our coasts and subsequent develdj)- 

 ments have shown that it is an antarctic species and that Doctor 

 Townsend's specimens were rare stragglers from southern oceans. 

 The silvery-gray fulmar or "cape dove," as it has been called, 

 is now well known as a species of wide distribution in Antarctic seas, 

 where it replaces to a certain extent our common fulmar of the north 

 Atlantic Ocean. Godman (1907) gives a long list of localities where 

 it has been seen or taken and then says : 



It will be seen from the above list of localities that the species is found in 

 the neighbourhood of the Antarctic pack ice from August to March, and I 

 am of Dr. Wilson's opinion that it is a migratory bird, as it has been observed 

 in the southern seas during the summer months, December, January, and 

 February, while its farthest northern records occur during the southern winter, 

 when it retires to the open sea. It will therefore be noticed that P. glaoialoideg 

 does not habitually frequent the ice, but keeps almost entirely to the open 

 ocean. 



Nesting. — Our knowledge of its breeding habits is exceedingly 

 fragmentary and quite unsatisfactory. Perhaps its principal breed- 

 ing grounds have never been found. Dr. E. A. Wilson (1907) says: 



Kerguelen Island is supposed to be a breeding place. Nothing appears to 

 be known of its breeding habits; the Scottish expedition were unable to find 

 it nesting, though they strongly suspected that it bred on the north side of 

 Laurie Island ; nor were we in the Discovery any more successful. I can only • 

 suggest the Balleny Islands as a possible nesting place, but If the bird breeds 

 upon Kerguelen Islands it is much more likely that the more northern sub- 

 Antarctic islands will prove eventually to harbour them. 



Gould (1841) writes: 



I am informed that it arrives in Georgia in September for the purpose of 

 breeding, and that it lays its eggs in holes in the precipices overhanging the 

 sea. On the approach of winter it is said to retire from that island. 



More recent explorations in Antarctic lands by Sir Douglas Mawson 

 (1914) and by various members of his party have discovered what 

 are probably the main breeding grounds of this species. Their ac- 

 counts! are decidedly fragmentary, but they demonstrate beyond 

 doubt that the "silver-grey petrel," or "southern fulmar," as they 

 call it, breeds at extreme southern latitudes, on the very edge of the 

 Antarctic ice and snow. At Penguin Point, on Adelie Land, they 

 found these birds nesting in hundreds on December 31, 1912. Here 



