Two Species of Fish Brought to Nestling Pigeon Guillemots
Two Species of Fish Brought to Nestling Pigeon Guillemots.-Storer (Univ. Calif. Publ. Zool., 52, 1952:139) mentions fish, species undetermined, as food items brought to young, by the Pigeon Guillemot (Ceppkus grylle) in California. His observations on California guillemots were conducted at the Point Lobos Reserve, Monterey County, California. He watched nests which were on an island across a narrow strip of water and inaccessible.
During the nesting season of 1953 I was fortunate in being able to visit with ease a nest on the mainland. Almost daily observations were made on this nest in July. On four of these visits fish which had been brought to the nest but which had not been eaten by the young were collected. I assume that the young swallow their food fish whole and that these were too large for them to use. The collected fish were taken to the Hopkins Marine Station where Dr. Rolf Bolin identified them and made the following measurements: One Pacific sanddab (Citharichthys sordidus), length 106 mm., three rockfish (Sebastodes jordani), lengths, 135, 121 and 132 mm. It may be interesting to note that these are bottom-inhabiting fish, thus indicating somewhat the depth to which the guillemot goes in order to obtain food in this area.--KEN LEGG, Naturd Bridges State Park, Santa Cruz, California, October 31, 1953.
