North Atlantic.
Voyage from Liverpool to Boston - Gulf Stream waters.
1911.
Aug. 6
(No 4)
[August 6, 1911]

Puffinus affinis
Puffinus major

    About the middle of the afternoon some birds quite new
to me appeared half a mile or more from the ship. I first saw
three flying together and shortly afterwards one or two more moving
singly. They acted much like Greater Shearwaters but looked only
about twice as large as Leach's Petrels. As nearly as I could make
out they were wholly white below with a broad white collar about
the neck. Their crown backs & wings (above) looked black or blackish.
Allen who saw them with me at once referred them rather
confidently to Puffinus auduboni* a species with which he
is familiar with in the West Indies but which I do not
remember to have met with living. These birds seemed to
me rather too small for it but they were, as I have
said, a long distance away and we did not have a very
good view of them for the wind was fresh and the white capped
waves running rather high at the time. A single Greater
Shearwater was seen by Allen, in the forenoon I believe.

*Subsequent comparison of skins of this bird with those of P. affinis [Puffinus affinis] (in Mus. Comp. Zool. [Museum of Comparative Zoology])
has satisfied me that the Petrels here referred to belonged without question to the latter species.