The Bird Banding Laboratory gets band reports for birds such as albatross, terns, gulls from shipping vessels. We usually receive several each year. Most of these are not from US vessels and sometimes a banded bird will stay with a ship into port and create a very strange out-of-area encounter. Just thought this would be of interest in reference to the discussion on ship-assisted birds. Cheers, Kathy ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Ship assisted gulls. Author: mdosprey@ARI.Net at NBS-Internet-Gateway Date: 2/24/99 12:21 AM Hello all, I thought that Bob Mumfords post regarding ship assisted gulls was rather informative. Certainly any birder that has spent that much time at sea has a level of authority that should not be discounted. My question is what evidece is there that birds such as gulls are being ship assisted? Certainly since it is mentioned so often (although not here), there must be some reason to think it happens. Curious, Todd Day Jeffersonton, VA BlkVulture@aol.com