Table 4. continued. 
SPECIES 
MIDDLE 
COASTAL LOWER TAMPA BAY TAMPA BAY 
BEACHES medium to medium 
high salinity high salinity salinity 
HILLSBOROUGH 
& MCKAY BAYS 
low salinity 
Silver perch X X 
Bairdiel1 a chrvsoura 
Silver jenny X X 
Eucinostomus quia 
Code goby X X 
Gobiosoma robustum 
Seabirds and wading birds are a very visible and important 
component of the animal life of the bay. Because they are relatively 
easy to observe, counts and species observations are abundant. 
Eighty-three species of birds are associated with marine habitats in the 
bay. Many of these use certain bay habitats for nesting and raising 
young, and also wade in the shallows or dive in deeper waters to feed on 
fish and invertebrates. 
The Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidental is ) is particularly well 
studied (Woolfenden and Schreiber 1973; Schreiber and Schreiber 1983). 
The adults nest in the canopy of mangroves on natural or artificial 
islands in the bay where they are protected from mammalian predators 
(e.g., raccoon, Procvon lotor ) which typically do not swim across water 
barriers. 
The total breeding population of colonial birds in Tampa Bay is 
estimated to be 75,000 pairs, two-thirds of which are Laughing Gulls 
(Paul and Woolfenden 1985). The Laughing Gull population is estimated to 
be one-third of the entire breeding population in the southeast United 
States. The Brown Pelican population of 2,700 to 3,000 breeding pairs 
represents nearly one-third of the entire Florida population. In 1983, 
an estimated 10,200 pairs of White Ibis were present in one large colony 
at the Alafia River (Paul and Woolfenden 1985). 
McKay Bay, in the northeast part of Tampa Bay, typically supports 
a winter population of almost 25,000 marine birds, which during eleven 
years of censusing, have included 75 species. Almost 80% of these are 
five species: Lesser Scaup, Ruddy Duck, Dunlin, Short-billed Dowitcher, 
and Western Sandpiper (Paul and Woolfenden 1985). 
Although some species which formerly nested in the bay have 
returned recently (Reddish Egret in 1974, Roseate Spoonbill in 1975), 
recent population declines in many species are apparent. Paul and 
102 
