NOTES

SUPPOSED NORTHERN RECORDS OF THE SOUTHERN FULMAR

RICHARD C. BANKS, National Ecology ResearchCenter, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service;National Museum of Natural History, Washington,D.C. 20560 The Southernor Slender-billedFulmar, Fulrnarus glacialoides, has variously been on primary (AmericanOrnithologists' Union [A. O. U.] 1910, 1983) or hypothetical (A. O. U. 1931, 1957) listsof NorthAmerican birds. Its fluctuatingstatus results both from acceptanceversus rejection of particularrecords and from recentexpansion of the A. O. U. check-list'sgeographic coverage to includeMexico and CentralAmerica. [One searchingthose lists will note that the bird has been treated also in the genus Priocellaand underthe specificname antarctica.]This breeding species of the antarctic continentand far southernislands ranges northward in itsnonbreeding season to about 40øS (Jouanin and Mougin 1979) or to the northern end of the Humboldt Current at about6øS (Murphy1936:598). Murphy (1936) notedthat there are morerecords of thisspecies in the NorthPacific than of any othersouthern petrel, presumably alluding to the severalreports from the westcoast of North America.Bourne (1967:150-151), however,rejected all northernhemisphere records; of the threethat he discussed,none seemed"remotely acceptable." There are actuallysix reports of thisantarctic species in the northwest Pacific, i.e., from the west coast of North America. The evidence for or againstsome of them hasnot previouslybeen discussed, and neverhave they been consideredtogether. The firstNorth Pacificrecord, of a birdcollected by J. K. Townsendsupposedly off Oregon,within a day'ssail of themouth of theColumbia River, was reported by Audubon (1839) underthe name Procellariatenuirostris. This recordwas longaccepted (A. O. U. 1910) buteventually was shown to be probablyerroneous by Stone(1930). According to Stone,"Townsend had no clearidea of the identityof the variousspecies of Tubinares nor of where he securedthe severalspecimens" that he sentto Audubon. Townsend had ampleopportunity to collectthe SouthernFulmar during a prolongedstay in Chile, and probablyhe did not labelhis specimens.On thisbasis, the SouthernFulmar was transferredto the hypotheticallist by the A. O. U. (1931, 1957). This"Columbia River" specimenis apparentlyalso the basisfor earlystatements that the speciesranged north alongthe Pacificcoast to Washington(A. O. U. 1895) or WashingtonTerritory (see Jewettet al. 1953:671). The specimenis presently in the NationalMuseum of Natural History(USNM 2032), havingcome from Audubonthrough Spencer F. Baird. There are no data on the earliest label, which is Baird's. Cassin(1858:410) wrotethat the only specimenof Procellariatenuirostris taken by the Wilkes [U.S.] ExploringExpedition (of 1838-1842) "is labelledas havingbeen obtainedon the coastof Oregon."This report was repeated by Bairdet al. (1884:374). However, the catalogof specimenstaken on that expedition(Cassin 1858:452) lists no P. tenuirostrisbut does mention a P. glacialoidesfrom the "ArianticOcean"; the latter speciesor specimenis not includedin any accountin the main text. Peale's (1848:338) earliercatalog of the ExploringExpedition's specimens similarly listed a singleP. glacialoides,but gave the localityas the "South PacificOcean." The one specimenof Fulrnarusglacialoides from the U.S. ExploringExpedition now in the NationalMuseum of NaturalHistory (USNM 15439) hasno originallabel; the present labelbears the locality"Atlantic O." Loomis (1918:90) attemptedto verify the U.S. ExploringExpedition's specimen from Oregon, withoutsuccess. He was told that the specimen,USNM 15707, was no longerin the collection.However, USNM 15707 and 15439 seemto be duplicateentries for the same specimen,albeit with differentoriginal identifications and localities;both have the "originalnumber" given as "757." Unfortunately,this confusionregarding the origin of the Exploring Expedition'sspecimens is not uncommon. The true Western Birds 19:121-124, 1988 121 NOTES provenanceof this specimenremains unknown, but there is no evidencethat it was the coast of Oregon. J. G. Cooperfound a skeletonon [Santa]Catalina Island, California, in June, 1863, that he ascribedto this species(Baird et al. 1884:374). Cooper (1887) also attributed that specimento Ventura County, California,accounting for the apparentlyseparate occurrencenoted by Willett (1912). No basisfor Cooper'sidentification of the skeleton was ever given, and the depositoryfor the specimenwas never stated. The species wasplaced on hypotheticallists by Willett (1912), Grinnell(1915), and Howell (1917). Grinnelland Miller (1944:557) furthersuggested that Cooper "misidentifiedor confused" someof the shearwaterswith which he reportedlysaw this species along the California coast. None of Cooper's reportscan be verified. A recordof thisspecies from Kotzebue Sound, Alaska (Nelson 1883), listedas Priocella tenuirostri$,was shown to be based on a misidentificationof Puffinus tenuirostri$ (Stejneger1884), then calledthe Slender-billedShearwater. This errorresulted more from confusion of the names than from actual misidentification(Nelson 1887:63). Coues (1903:1030) listedVancouver Island, BritishColumbia, as the northern limit of F. glacialoide$on the Pacificcoast, without reference. This recordis not mentioned elsewhere,to my knowledge.Fannin (1898) recordeda specimenof PaShas tenuirostris takennear Victoria, Vancouver Island, in 1891, whichmay, by a slipsimilar to Nelson's, have been the basisfor Coues' listing. The most persistentnorthern hemisphererecord of the Southern Fulmar is from Mazatlan,Sinaloa, Mexico, and is basedon a specimenin the BritishMuseum (Natural History)from the Salvin-Godmancollection (Salvin 1896). The specimenfrom Mazatlan formedthe basisfor Salvin and Godman's(1904) descriptionof the speciesand was alsothe modelfor the plate in Godman's(1908:165, pl. 43) monographof the petrels. Nonetheless,those authors did not provide any additional information about the specimenor itsoccurrence so far out of range. Althoughthey recognizedthe antarctic natureof the species,the reportsaccepted then from evenfarther north--to "Washington Territory,"based on Townsend'sspecimen and perhapsother records(Baird et al. 1884)--undoubtedly persuadedthem that the Mazatlanrecord was not exceptional. This record is the basisfor inclusionof the speciesby Friedmannet al. (1950) and in the main list of the sixth edition of the A. O. U. Check-list (A. O. U. 1983). Bourne(1967:150-151) notedthat the Salvin-Godmanspecimen had beenlisted, without any other data, in the BritishMuseum catalog,but he could not trace it. The specimenis stillin the BritishMuseum (Natural History), catalogued as 1888-5-18-94, and isproperly identified as Fulmarus glacialoides (fide Alan Knox). There isno original collector'slabel, but the specimenbears a label of "MaisonVerreaux," whenceSalvin and Godman musthave obtainedit. Accordingto Sharpe (1906:503), "The Maison Verreauxwas one of the greatest,if not the greatest,emporium of naturalhistory that the world has ever seen.... The specimenswere often issuedwithout any exact indicationof locality,but had attachedto them in Jules'[Verreaux] handwriting a large labelgiving the synonymyfrom Bonaparte's'Conspectus'...." This is the situation withthe presentspecimen. The Verreauxbrothers receivbd specimens from the world over.The addedhandwritten locality "Mazatlan" and probably the sexsymbol (for male) cannot be considereddefinitive, and this record is not acceptable. In summary,none of the recordsof Fulmarusglacialoides off the Pacificcoast of North America can be consideredvalid. Uncriticalacceptance of the earliestreports made subsequentreports seem equally acceptable.Dubious localitieswere not questioned,and birdsof similarname were confused.The SouthernFulmar should appear only as hypotheticalon listsof North Americanbirds. I thankAlan Knox of the BritishMuseum (Natural History) for providinginformation on the Salvin-Godmanspecimen in that collectionand M. RalphBrowning for technical support.W. Earl Godfrey, Burt L. Monroe, and RobertW. Storercommented on the manuscript,and JosephMorlan made importantcontributions as a referee.

122 NOTES

LITERATURE CITED

American Ornithologists'Union. 1895. Check-list of North American Birds. 2nd ed. Am. Ornithol. Union, New York. American Ornithologists'Union. 1910. Check-list of North American Birds. 3rd ed. Am. Ornithol. Union, New York. American Ornithologists'Union. 1931. Check-list of North American Birds. 4th ed. Am. Ornithol. Union, Lancaster American Ornithologists'Union. 1957. Check-list of North American Birds. 5th ed. Am. Ornithol. Union, Baltimore. American Ornithologists'Union. 1983. Check-listof North American Birds. 6th ed. Am. Ornithol. Union, Washington, D.C. Audubon, J. J. 1839. OrnithologicalBiography. Vol. 5. Adam & Charles Black, Edinburgh. Baird, S. F., Brewer,T. M., and Ridgway,R. 1884. The water birdsof North America. Vol. 2. Mere. Mus. Comp. Zool. 12. Bourne, W. R. P. 1967. Long-distancevagrancy in the petrels. Ibis 109:141-167. Cassin,J. 1858. United StatesExploring Expedition. Mammalogy and Ornithology. Lippincott,Philadelphia. Cooper,J. G. 1887. Additionsto the birdsof VenturaCounty, California. Auk 4:85-94. Coues, E. 1903. Key to North AmericanBirds. 5th ed. Dana Estes,Boston. Fannin, J. 1898. Check listof BritishColumbia birds, in A PreliminaryCatalogue of the Collectionsof Natural History and Ethnologyin the ProvincialMuseum, Victoria, BritishColumbia, pp. 15-55. ProvincialMuseum, Victoria, B.C. Friedmann, H., Griscom, L., and Moore, R. T. 1957. Distributionalcheck-list of the birds of Mexico. Pac. Coast Avifauna 29. Godman, F. D. 1908. A monographof the petrels.Pt. 3. Witherby, London. Grinnell, J. 1915. A distributionallist of the birds of California. Pac. Coast Avifauna 11. Grinnell, J., and Miller, A. H. 1944. The distributionof the birds of California. Pac. Coast Avifauna 27. Howell, A. B. 1917. Birds of the islandsoff the coastof southernCalifornia. Pac. Coast Avifauna 12. Jewett, S. G., Taylor, W. P., Shaw, W. T., and Aldrich, J. W. 1953. Birds of Washington State. Univ. Washington Press, Seattle. Jouanin, C., and Mougin, J.-L. 1979. Order Procellariiformes,in Check-listof Birds of the World. Vol. 1, 2nd ed. (E. Mayr and G. W. Cottrell,eds.), pp. 48-121. Mus. Comp. Zool., Cambridge,MA. Loomis, L. M. 1918. A review of the albatrosses,petrels, and divingpetrels. Proc. Calif. Acad. Sci., 4th ser., vol. 2, pt. 2, no. 12. Murphy, R. C. 1936. Oceanicbirds of SouthAmerica. Vol. 1. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., New York. Nelson,E. W. 1883. Birdsof BeringSea and the ArcticOcean, in Cruiseof the Revenue- Steamer Cotwin in Alaska and the N.W. Arctic Ocean in 1881, pp. 55-118. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Nelson,E. W. 1887. Reportupon Natural History Collections Made in Alaskabetween the Years 1877 and 1881. Government PrintingOffice, Washington,D.C.

123 NOTES

Peale, T. R. 1848. United StatesExploring Expedition. Mammalia and Ornithology. C. Sherman, Philadelphia. Salvin,O. 1896. Tubinares,in Catalogueof the Gaviaeand Tubinaresin the Collection of the BritishMuseum, by H. Saundersand O. Salvin. BritishMuseum (Natural History), London. Salvin,O., and Godman, F. D. 1904. BiologiaCentrali-Americana. Aves. Vol. 3, sig. 55. London. Sharpe, R. B. 1906. Birds,in The Historyof the CollectionsContained in the Natural HistoryDepartments of the BritishMuseum. Vol. 2, pp. 79-115. BritishMuseum, London. Stejneger,L. 1884. Analectaornithologica. Auk 1:225-236. Stone, W. 1930. Townsend'sOregon tubinares.Auk 47:414-415. Willerr,G. 1912. Birdsof the Pacificslope of southernCalifornia. Pac. CoastAvifauna 7. Accepted 24 June 1988

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