74 ALASKA. 



but it is without profit, except as a luxury. The natives take 

 their poultry into their houses, and relish their pork after the 

 hogs have fed fat upon seal-carriou, aud therefore it is profitable 

 to them. 



lu the appendix will be found a detailed chapter upon the 

 ornithology of these islands, but the great exhibition of pinni- 

 pedia preponderates over every other form of animal life. Still 

 the spectacle of birds nesting and breeding, as they do on Saint 

 George's Island, to the number of millions, flecking the high 

 basaltic blufi's, (a shore-line of that character twenty miles in 

 length,) black, brown, and white, as they porch or cling to the 

 clififs in the labor of incubation, is a sight of exceeding interest 

 and constant novelty, affording the naturalist opportunity for 

 investigation into the most minute details of the reproduction 

 of these vast flocks of circumboreal water-fowl. Saint Paul's 

 Island, owing to the low character of its shore-line, a large por- 

 tion of which is but slightly elevated above the sea aud is 

 sandy, is not visited by such myriads of birds as are seen at 

 Saint George ; but the small rock, Walrus Island, is fairly cov- 

 ered with sea-fowls, and the Otter Island blufi's are crowded to 

 their utmost. The variety in these millions of breeding-birds 

 is not great, since it consists of only ten or twelve names, and 

 the whole list belonging to the Prybilov Islands, stragglers 

 and migratory, contains but forty species. Conspicuous among 

 the last-named class is the robin, which was brought from the 

 mainland, evidently against its own will, by a storm or gale of 

 wind, as must also be the case with the solitary hawks and 

 owls occasionally noticed here. 



After the dead silence of a long ice-bound winter, the 

 arrival in the spring of large, noisy flocks of "choochkies" 

 {PhaJeris microceros) is most cheerful and interesting. Thtse 

 are bright, fearless little birds, with bodies generally plump and 

 fat, aiul come usually in chattering flocks by the 1st to the 5th of 

 May. They are caught by the people, to any number required, 

 in hand scoop-nets, as they fly to and from their nests, made in 

 the cliffs and among bowlders. They are succeeded about the 

 20th July by large flocks of fat, red-legged turn-stones, likewise 

 edible, {^Strepsilas interpres^) which come in suddenly from the 

 west or north, where they have been breeding, and sto[) on the 

 islands for a month or six wrecks, to feed fat upon the flesh flies 

 and their eggs, which swarm over the killing-groumJs ; these 

 handsome, red-legged birds go familiarly among the seals, 



