The Short-tailed Albatross 



No. 402 



Short-tailed Albatross 



A. O. U. No. 82. Diomedea albatrus Pallas. 



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 

 914.4 (3 feet); wing 508 (20.00); tail 146. 1 (5.75); bill 1 27- 152.4 (5.00-6.00) in length; 

 depth at base 50.8 (2.00); outline of culmen concave. 



Recognition Marks. — Eagle size; white plumage, large beak of adult; nearly 

 uniform sooty plumage of immature bird without white "face" (but chin whitish). 



Nesting. — No authentic description. Egg: Dull white stained heavily, or not, 

 at larger end with russet. 



General Range. — North Pacific Ocean from Lower California and China to 

 Bering Strait. Breeding grounds unknown. (Evidence is lacking that eggs from the 

 Bonin Islands represent any other species than D. immutabilis.) 



Occurrence in California. — Of common occurrence well off-shore, presumably 

 along the entire coast. Several records of occurrence off Monterey; has been seen on 

 San Diego Bay, Monterey Bay, and San Francisco Bay. 



Authorities. — Lawrence (Diomedea brachyura), in Baird, Rep. Pac. R. R. 

 Surv., vol. ix., 1858, p. 822 ("coast of Calif.") ; Godman, Monogr. Petrels, pt. v., 1910, 

 p. 326, pi. 92; Willett, Pac. Coast Avifauna, no. 7, 1912, p. 17 (status in s. Calif.); 

 Loomis, Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., ser. 4, ii., pt. 2, no. 12, 1918, p. 74 (crit. ; syst.). 



"At length did cross an Albatross," 



NO ONE who has not suffered the pangs of solitude, or the worse 

 pangs of ill-assorted company long endured, knows with what glad acclaim 

 a fellow mortal may be hailed. In a cityful we should not deign him a 

 glance, this brother in jeans, but here at the edge of the wilderness, this 

 uninhabitable waste through which we have been plodding for weeks on 

 end, a merest man seems a creature wrought on heroic lines, a very demi- 

 god. He is for us an authentic outpost of life and a dear pledge of that 

 wholesome, myriad-pressing, human contact for which our hearts have 

 come to ache. So upon the trackless ocean, the sight of a bird brings to 

 the watcher a sudden electric thrill. Our eyes devour the vagabond with 

 quick apprehension, and there springs up within us a world-conquering, 

 class-obliterating sense of fellowship. 



"As it had been a Christian soul, 

 We hailed it in God's name." 



Those who have studied pelagic species just off shore — and there are 



1989 



