1894
April 15
(No 3)
Water Birds of the West Indies
  Now that I am on the point of leaving the
West Indies it occurs to me to enter a few general
comments on the water birds which I have seen.
They have been very few in number both as regards
species and individuals, a fact which is doubtless due
to the great depth of the water, even very near the
islands, and the consequent scarcity or lack of feeding
grounds. In many of the harbors and along most
of the leeward shore I did not see a single bird
of any kind and at the most there would be only
a few Brown Pelicans and now and then a Royal
Tern or two. The only Gulls which I saw anywhere
were a single bird, which I took to be a Herring Gull,
at Port-of-Spain, and three or four Black-heads (Larus
atricilla at Grenada. Booby Gannets and Tropic Birds
kept well off shore as rule and were nowhere very
numerous. There were a good many Frigate Birds
about Monos (Trinidad) and the neighboring waters
but they were very scarce elsewhere. I saw the
white Sula piscator (?) only near Sombrero on the 13th
and the Sooty Tern also on only two occasions, yesterday
& to-day.
  Perhaps the commonest and most generally-distributed
bird of these seas is the Dusky Shearwater (P. auduboni).
Scarce a day has passed actually at sea when I
have not noted a dozen or more and frequently
two or three hundred have been seen in the course
of a few hours.
  Oceanites oceanica completes the list which numbers
in all only ten species!