Papers on Philippine Birds I. — A Collecting Trip to Calayan and Fuga u 
BY RICHARD C. MCGREGOR 
O N July 25, 1903, I finished packing my provisions and collecting gear 
preparatory to a trip to the Batanes and Babuyanes, two groups of small 
islands situated north of the island of Luzon. The avian fauna of these 
islands was quite unknown at this time except for ten species which were observed 
by John Whitehead, the English naturalist, during a short enforced stay on the 
small island of Fuga. Meager as was Whitehead’s material it included a 
species ( Hypsipetes fug en sis Grant) not found outside of the Babuyanes; the 
genus is not known from any other part of the Philippine Archipelago but it 
has representative species in Japan, Formosa and the Loo Choo Islands. 
These facts led me to look forward with the greatest interest to collecting on 
these islands. 
The morning of July 26 was very nasty. The typhoon signal was flying on 
the Weather Bureau building and Manila Bay was so choppy as to render embarca- 
tion on the Coast Guard Cutter extremely unpleasant and somewhat dangerous. 
Cutters on the run we were about to make, from Manila to Aparri, are always 
heavily loaded and it was noon before all was aboard and we headed for the 
mouth of Manila Bay. As we neared Corregidor, a small rocky island just within 
the mouth of the bay, the heavy seas caused our ship to pitch to an alarming de- 
gree and the necessary slowing of the engines lost all our headway. 
Fortunately the captain decided to stop at Mariveles until the sea abated. 
Five days we remained at anchor with wind blowing furiously and rain coming in 
frequent squalls. To remain on deck meant to be soaked, so the passengers hud- 
dled together in the saloon or in the little staterooms. This boat has accommo- 
dations for eight passengers in the staterooms, and four can rest with some 
comfort on the transoms of the cabin; on this trip we carried 24 first-class pas- 
sengers. But what is discomfort to the collector ! During the time we were at 
anchor off Mariveles we took the rarest bird of all our trip and I felt well repaid. 
A small petrel was driven aboard and captured. This was the first time that any 
species of the family had been taken in the Philippines. The bird was so badly 
damaged that even the authorities at the National Museum could not determine 
its species. 
On the 27th two small flocks of swifts (Collocalia) flew across the bay in the 
rain. Two species of tern, one of them Sterna bergii, and a gull ( Lams ridibundus) 
were seen in small numbers. Two white-bellied eagles (. Haliaetus leucogaster) cir- 
cled about the ship and several individuals of the eastern fish hawk (H alias tur 
intermedins') were continually in sight. Birds of the last species are numerous 
about the Manila shipping where they perform the duties that fall to the gulls 
along the California coast. In Japanese ports as well I have noticed great num- 
bers of hawks feeding on scraps thrown overboard from ships’ galleys. 
When the typhoon had blown itself out we returned to Manila for more stores 
and then made a new start up the w r est coast of Luzon and w’ith fairly good 
weather. 
Off Lingayen Gulf and to the southward on August 2 I noted numbers of 
shearwaters but could not tell of what species never having killed any in these 
waters. Pnjftnus leucomelas has been known from the islands for a long time; it 
a The birds obtained on this trip were fully reported in Bulletin of the Philippine Museum, No. 4. 
