Figure 37. This first-year Short-tailed Albatross, photographed on 5 November 1985 at Cordell Bank in Marin County, was aged from band information (1985-142; Arnold Small). Second-fall birds can resemble this individual, but they are more worn and can show a white crescent below the eye and (sometimes) additional white in the face. By the third fall, white develops in the face and scapulars.

 

Figure 38. Field sketches of a Short-tailed Albatross found on 26 October 1998 off Pt. Reyes, Marin County; one depicts the bird’s size relative to a smaller Black-footed Albatross. A “crisp white crescent” noted on the head indicates a second-year bird (1998-179; Sophie Webb).

 

Figure 199. After its populations were decimated by Japanese feather and egg collectors in the early 1900s, the Short-tailed Albatross became scarce to absent off the California coast. This first-fall bird (aged by band information and fresh plumage) was photographed on 3 November 1985 at Cordell Bank, Marin County. This species’ rate of occurrence in California has been gathering momentum since 1998, apparently reflecting the success of ongoing conservation efforts at the breeding islands (1985-142; Rich Stallcup).

 

 

 

SHORT-TAILED ALBATROSS Phoebastria albatrus (Pallas, 1769)

Accepted: 12 (60%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 8	CBRC review: records from 1900 through present
Not submitted/reviewed: 3	Larger image with caption: see figures

This magnificent bird historically nested on numerous islands off Japan and Taiwan, dispersing to waters off the Pacific coast from Alaska south to Baja California Sur (25°N; Anthony 1924). Inconclusive evidence suggests possible nesting on San Clemente and/or San Nicolas Islands approximately 3700 years ago (Porcasi 1999). Until the turn of the nineteenth century, this giant was described as a fairly common, or even common, year-round component of California’s avifauna. It appears to have outnumbered the Black-footed Albatross in the inshore waters, although evidence is mixed regarding how close to land either species routinely occurred when their populations were more robust (Evermann 1886, Howell 1917, Loomis 1918, Anthony 1924, Willett 1933, Grinnell and Miller 1944). California reports evaporated around the end of the nineteenth century as the species nearly went extinct as a result of plume hunting, two volcanic eruptions on the Japanese island of Tori-shima, and World War II (Austin 1949, Hasegawa 1984, Brazil 1991, Carboneras 1992). Now benefiting from protections on the breeding grounds, the species currently maintains colonies on Tori-shima and among the Senkaku Islands. Non-breeding adults have appeared in albatross colonies on Midway Island (BirdLife International 2000, 2001). As the population has increased, so has the frequency of sightings from the southern Bering Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean between Alaska (where now found annually in small but increasing numbers) and California. None has been recorded off the Baja California Peninsula in modern times, but on 29 April 1990 an adult was reported far south of there, near the Islas Revillagigedo (Santaella and Sada 1991), and those authors also published a November 1986 observation (by D. G. Ainley and L. B. Spear) of an adult approximately 230 nautical miles off Manzanillo, Colima.

The Short-tailed Albatross was unrecorded in California between 1900 and 1977 but has since been documented 12 times in state waters, including eight between 1998 and 2003; see also Appendix H. Each modern occurrence has involved a bird less than three years old, chiefly far offshore during fall and the first part of winter (7 August–15 January), although the three records in 2002 and 2003 came in late winter and early spring. The 1985 bird had been banded as a fledgling on Tori-shima earlier that year (AB 40:329). All other birds lacking substantial white in the face or upperwings could be in either their first or second years. Several California reports of this species (e.g., Helm 1980) actually refer to aberrant or older Black-footed Albatrosses, or possibly to Laysan × Black-footed hybrids (Roberson 1980, 1986; McKee and Pyle 2002).

 

[CAPE PETREL Daption capense (Linnaeus, 1758) – see hypothetical section]

[SOLANDER’S PETREL Pterodroma solandri (Gould, 1844) – see hypothetical section]