In a message dated 96-01-10 11:22:47 EST, you write:

Tracee Geernaert writes:

>A little side note; -- (to northern fulmar thread)
>
>Sooty Shearwaters often appeared in much lesser numbers and only after the
>N. Fulmars have located the boat. Shearwaters were much better at locating
>food often swimming in the middle of the Fulmar flock with their head
>underwater and presumably their eyes open. Once located they'd swim down 6
>feet or so to suck up a sinking piece of bait (its no wonder the fishermen
>called them "Whalebirds" and the Fulmars "Sea Pigeons". The N. Fulmars were

>not so successful and I rarely saw them chasing bait underwater.
>

I have observed this behavior in sooty shearwaters (SOSH) as well. It
appears to me that they are certainly dipping their heads under water and
*looking* around. SOSH have preference for squid, fish, and offal.
Short-tailed shearwaters (STSH) do this as well, but to a much lesser
extent. STSH are primarily krill feeders. It is an incredible sight to see
the surface of the sea churned up in a froth filled with hundreds to
thousands blackening the surface and ravenously leap-frogging over one
another, diving, and feeding in krill swarms, especially south of the
central and western Aleutian Islands. In Antarctic waters south of
Australia, these swarms can all be concentrated into black carpets of
hundreds of thousands if not millions.

Contrary to Harrison and other misleading published information and *common*
knowledge, SOSH is a bird of cool temperate waters, not a bird of the cold
high southern latitudes or northern ones either. Most SOSH range south only
to about the Antarctic Convergence (and locally concentrate there) at about
55:S, and north mostly to the eastern Aleutians (some in the SE Bering).
STSH, being the krill feeders that they are, are the ones most likely in the
massive swarms as far north as the ice edge off Barrow, and the ice edge
south of Australia. In winter and in transit of course, a few will be found
anywhere in between as off our Washington coast. If the literature hasn't
been updated yet, it ought to be to stop perpetuating this myth.

Richard Rowlett <pagodroma at aol.com>
Bellevue, WA, USA