Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE STORK-LIKE BIRDS

THE FRIGATE-BIRDS (Family Fregatida)

Frigate Bird Habits

The food of the Frigate-birds consists of fish, a part of which they capture themselves, but in the main they apparently subsist by robbing the more industrious Gannets and Terns. On observing a successful fisherman they give chase, and no matter how fast he may fly or how often he may turn, the pursuer is always at hand, and finally in despair he drops the fish, which is caught before it can reach the water.

The Frigate-birds may often be seen soaring at vast heights, from which they often drop like an arrow. Scott, who saw them about the Dry Tortugas, says : “Almost every day about noon a party of from four to twenty of these birds (F. aquila) came to Garden Key, and attaining a point just above the Harbor Light Tower on the northeast wall of the fort, they would begin to soar in what seemed to be a sort of way of resting.

The circles were of about one hundred feet diameter; the flight very regular, slow, and monotonous, with no apparent motion of the wings for hours. It tired me to look at them."

Of the two species the larger (F. aquila) is found in tropical and subtropical seas of both hemispheres, chiefly north of the equator, coming north in this country regularly to Florida, Texas, and California, and casually to Nova Scotia. A smaller form of this (F. a. minor) is found in the central Pacific and Indian oceans, while the still smaller and quite distinct F. arid, the male of which has a conspicuous white flank-patch, occurs also in the tropical and subtropical portions of the same oceans.

The Frigate-birds nest in colonies throughout their range, building a very slight nest on mangroves and other low trees, or on the ground. The egg is usually single, pure white, and about two and seventy hundredths by one and seventy-five hundredths inches.

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