Ah Michael,

I wasn't even *considering* implying any prevarication :-). It seems
that having a number of booby sightings early in a warm-water event
should make sense.

I was curious, though, if folks might speculate on why boobies might not
continue to show up throughout an extended warm-water event? I can guess
that perhaps those that did 'pioneer' up here might not have found much
in the way of food and good southern climes to induce them to stay or return.

Continued ENSO might have diminished the production of seabirds in their
southern colonies such that the fledging juveniles that *might* wander
north are reduced in numbers - making a rare occurrence even more unlikely?

I wonder whether the occurrence of *other* southern-type seabirds, which
show up more regularly, might be correlated with the strength or duration
of warm-water ocean conditions? For example, might frigatebirds occur
more frequently at the start of an extended El Nin~o event than later?
We might have this sort of information for the 1991-94 period buried in
field notes, but it would take someone to research and compile the data.

Just speculatin'.

Jon. Anderson
Olympia, WA
anderjda at dfw.wa.gov


On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, Michael Price wrote:

> Hi Jon,
>
> You'd make me a liar for one lousy year? ;-) Okay, okay, okay, it *was* 1992.
>
> >The water conditions in 1989-90 were *not* associated with an El Nino
> >event. The ENSO event began in 1991 and peaked in 1992. The conditions
> >continued through 1993 and kind of faded out by June 1994. Since then,
> >there have been localized warm water anomalies.
> >
> >To ascribe the 1991(?) sightings to El Nino begs the question: Why
> >weren't we swamped with Boobies through the 1992-94 period of warm water
> >events?
>
> No idea, Jon, but to have a cluster of 1st BC/Canada/Vancouver BC records of
> warm-water subtropicals in the same ENSO summer to me exceeds the
> possibility of coincidence. But, jeez louise, *I* don't know why we weren't
> up to our keisters in boobies. God alone knows what goes through the minds
> of those amiable little guys when things fall apart. It's a good question:
> why not put it out to Tweeterland?
>
> M
>
> michael_price at mindlink.bc.ca
>
>