Al Jaramillo wrote:

>The presence of Parasitics is related to the
>presence of terns, Elegants in this neck of the woods as Commons are
>offshore pelagic birds. Long-tails are only seen of in deep water, almost
>never from shore here as is true of Arctic Tern. Its amazing how common some
>of these things can be a few km. out but how rare they are on shore.

So Commons are only offshore there? Are they with Arctics offshore or in a
belt inshore from the Arctics? I've seen Common Terns from shore in
California, although they're much less common than Forster's, and I didn't
realize they weren't supposed to be onshore. Obviously very different from
Washington, where the Commons are onshore and Arctics off. Arctic Terns
seem to be blown to shore at the outer coast more often than their
attendant Long-tailed jaegers, but maybe that's just because they are a lot
more common.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416