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The Albatross Dance at Sea

W. K. Fisher

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About the last of March (1904), while cruising a hundred miles off San Diego, California, on the steamer "Albatross," Dr. Charles H. Gilbert of Stanford University observed a group of about six brown gonys (Diomedea nigripes) pair off and engage in their peculiar dance. The birds, of course, were resting on the surface of the water, which was rather rough. The writer has described this dance elsewhere (U. S. Fish Comm. Bull. 1903, p. 22; Auk, XXI, Jan. 1904, pp. II-14) as it was observed at their breeding ground on the island of Laysan, Hawaiian Group. At this locality Dr. Gilbert also became perfectly familiar with the performance, and at once recognized the familiar bowing and pointing of beaks in air. The second step, that of placing the bill under the wing, was also given. The distance was too great to detect the ridiculous groan which the birds utter at the end of each dance.

At that date the brown gony should have been feeding young on its breeding grounds--the scattered islets to the westward of the main Hawaiian Group. Dr. Gilbert states that he observed no individuals with the white tail coverts which are characteristic of the fully adult bird. Possibly these birds, which linger off our coast during the breeding season, are all young. The writer shot several in March 1902, about five hundred miles west of San Diego, and all of these were immature.

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