Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Parasitic Jaeger on Cayuga Lake, New York

1939; Oxford University Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/4078050

1938-4254

George Miksch Sutton,

Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies

Migration of the Red Phalarope off Massachusetts.--This pelagic shorebird, Phalaropus fulicarius, is so little known off the eastern United States that any contribution to its life history is of interest.For ten years I have been studying it as opportunity permitted off Cape Cod, and wish to put certain facts on record.(1) It is much more pelagic than the Northern Phalarope, and the total number of individuals using the western Ariantic as a migration route would appear to be very substantially less.(2) Its season of migration is much earlier in spring and much later in fall The first birds appear off Massachusetts April 2-12, still in winter plumage, and there are at least four such records in recent years, whereas the earliest date for the Northern Phalarope in eighty years is May 1.On April 19, 1938, Dr. and Mrs.Richard Tousey, J.P. Bishop and I spent the afternoon at Monomoy Point.Pouring rain and a southeast gale had prevailed all the preceding day and night.The feature of the afternoon was the discovery of a mass migration of the Red Phalarope.At least one thousand birds were moving northward along the tide-rip north of the Stone Horse Reef Lightship.The birds were in small flocks of from twenty-five to fifty, constantly rising, flying northward, circling about and pitching down in dense clusters to feed.They were watched for half an hour through powerful telescopes, and were mostly in transitional plumage.I have been unable to find any defmite record of so large a number of Red Phalaropes off the New England coast in spring.On the other hand there are several records of ten times that many Northern Phalaropes, the main flight of which is chiefly May 15-25.In the autumn the contrast is even more striking.The Northern Phalarope arrives regularly off Chatham early in August, the earliest date July 24, 1938 (Griscom and several others).The peak of the flight is from late August to mid-September; the latest date for the State is October 13.Only twice have I seen one or two Red Phalaropes in late August and once in mid-October.There is no record in the literature of any mass migration of this species in fall, but the great majority of fall records in recent years are in early November.With the Northern Phalarope, however, there is a well-known concentration area in the Bay of Fundy between Eastport and Grand Manan.Here up to a quarter of a million birds gather in early August, and it is consequently not surprising that flocks of a thousand or more are occasionally noted off the Massachuseths coast.These facts lead to the inference that the main fall flight of the Red Phalarope is far offshore, sometime between late September and late October, just the period when easterly gales are extremely rare, as compared with the preceding month and November.--LUDLOWGR•SCOM, M•eum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Parasitic Jaeger on Cayuga Lake, New York.--About a year ago, my friend Mr. S. Morris Pell reported seeing and examining a mounted immature jaeger said to have been captured at the north end of Cayuga Lake.Accompanying me to the city of Seneca Falls last June, Mr. Pell succeeded in locating the man who had mounted the specimen, Mr. George A. Brown.Mr. Brown informed us that the jaeger had been shot on October 15, 1937, along the west shore of the Lake, not far from the village of Canoga, in Seneca County.Eventually, in a garage in Seneca Falls, we found the bird itself.Since it had not been attacked by mice or moths, we were able to relax it and make it into a presentable