Jaegers in the Gulf of Mexico

Abstract

INFORMATION on pelagic bird life in the Gulf of Mexico has been slow in accumulating. Current literature on the status of the jaegers is particularly deficient. A fairly recent summary'9 listed fewer than 20 separate records of all three species in accounting for virtually all records for the entire Gulf through about 1952. Although the number of records has increased greatly during the past decade, the current A.O.U. Check-list3 lists neither the Parasitic Jaeger (Stercorarius parasiticus) nor the Longtailed Jaeger (S. longicaudus) as occurring in the Gulf, and it lists only two localities in the Gulf for the Pomarine Jaeger (S. pomarinus). This represents no change since the 1931 A.O.U. Check-list.2 Now enough data are available to evaluate better the status of these birds in the Gulf of Mexico. An important source of information on jaeger distribution is Audubon Field Notes, which has reported most of the jaeger observations in the Gulf in recent years. Table 1 lists these records through 1963 and all other records except my own made in 1961 from the U. S. Coast Guard cutter Gentian off the Texas and Louisiana coasts. The latter records appear in Figure 1. So few jaegers have been collected in the Gulf that any realistic evaluation of the status of the three species must take sight records into account. In this report all records which have come to my attention are included. For purposes of this report the waters of the Atlantic Ocean west of 81? west longitude and north of 220 north latitude are considered to lie within the Gulf of Mexico.