Tape #2 
Gene Kridler to Roger Clapp 
P-5 
my observations on all these trips we’ye made to Necker and we did see them on the 
broad shelves, especially on Northwest Cape, the Shark Bay side* They seem to favor 
the higher elevations moreso than the Sooties, however, the Sooties are found I guess 
about all elevations; in fact on Northwest Cape they’re just out of the sprays of the 
waves, that is the general run of waves that they have there. You won’t find the 
Gray-backs down as low as the Sooty Terns; they’re generally up on the top. There 
are all these broad shelves all along Shark Bay side of Northwest Cape and they’re 
also found scattered all along on the higher elevations of the hill. So, to the 
basis of this I will take exception with Fisher’s statement that they are only very 
sparingly found on the broad shelves, especially since his observations are based on 
one trip. 
The second page - Gray-backed Terns - first paragraph - last line - where you say 
they frequ errt ly nested on inaccessible cliffs on various slopes of the island - I changed 
the period to a comma and added including the upper parts of Northwest Cape. Then the 
1969 data has been added. 
- - 
This observation by Richardson - one bird seen the 20 th of December 1953 * I 1 m 
s'- YbQf '■v 
just wondering how significant that one bird is? Certainly on our observations on 
Midway there for a couple of years and I don’t know what Woodward and the rest of the 
boys have found out there on Kure, but boy, when those Sooty Terns come in, they’re in 
and in large numbers. Yet on the 19th of March 1913 Daily Reports, eggs and small young 
which would correspond with our 1965 trip when we figured there were 50?000 on the island 
and 2 Cfj 0 with chicks. For the island as a whole, 
having 3 nearly fledged young and then again we saw the same thing again in 1967^ all 
stages from eggs to fledged young, so perhaps they do start breeding in early December. 
Then the next paragraph on population, you say there are too few recent estimates 
to adequately document maximum numbers. I have crossed out recent, and said that there 
were too few estimates to adequately document maximum numbers. We have recent estimates 
and we had 8 estimates since and including 196^ compared to five running from 1902 to 1962, 
so we should say there are too few estimates to adequately document maximum numbers, and 
