A Further Note on Sea-Birds

• Published in: The Journal of Hellenic Studies
• Main Author: Buxton, John
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1974
• Subjects: Literature and Literary Theory; Linguistics and Language; Archeology; Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Language and Linguistics; Classics; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/630431; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S007542690010196X

In a ‘Note on Sea-birds’ [ JHS xcii (1972) 172–3] Miss Sylvia Benton comments on Mr J. K. Anderson's preceding Note, Θρᾷξ, Δυτῖνος, Καταρράκτης . But if we are to identify the species to which ancient names refer we must limit ourselves to those species which are now, or can be shown to have once been, present in Greece, and for this both accuracy of observation and a knowledge of the literature on the ornithology of Greece seem desirable. Miss Benton says: ‘A ship on which I was sailing was dive-bombed by Gannets just east of the harbour of Tinos: no doubt they were defending their nests on the cliffs’. But the Gannet ( Sula bassana ) is a bird of the North Atlantic which does not now nest, if it ever did, in the Mediterranean nor indeed south of 51° N. on the eastern coasts of the Atlantic, so that these dive-bombers, whatever they were, could hardly have been Gannets. There are only two authentic records of Gannets in Greece at all, in May 1853 and in April 1965 (A. Kanellis: Catalogus Faunae Graeciae; pars II Aves ed. W. Bauer, O. v. Helversen, M. Hodge, J. Martens. Thessaloniki, 1969).