FAUNA OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS AND ALASKA PENINSULA 37 



Bering Sea appeared to be the particular domain of the short- 

 tailed albatross in summer. Nelson (1887) defined its summer 

 range from 50° N. latitude northward through Bering Sea as 

 far as Bering Strait. He reported them in the Aleutians and 

 quotes T. H. Bean as having found them around the Gulf of 

 Alaska, but he considered the mouth of Cook Inlet and the 

 vicinity of the Barren Islands as their favorite resort. Nelson 

 "found them very common between the islands east of Unalaska" 

 during May 1877. Turner also found them plentiful among the 

 Aleutians, as well as at Cape Newenham in the Bristol Bay 

 region. Friedmann, who has examined bones unearthed from 

 ancient village sites on Kodiak, Amaknak, Unalaska, Little Kiska, 

 Atka, and Attu Islands, found numerous remains of this alba- 

 tross, but he found no remains of nigripes. They are reported to 

 have been abundant in the vicinity of the Pribilofs when whalers 

 were active there, and they became scarce when whaling was 

 abandoned. 



Austin H. Clark (1910), writing of his expedition in 1906, 

 reported that — 



We first saw this species about 100 miles east of Unalaska on the day 

 before our arrival at Dutch Harbor. On the next day, two were seen near 

 the Aleutian chain, one of them within five miles of the islands. Two 

 more were seen between Attu and Copper Island, on June 12; on the 20th 

 one was observed about 20 miles off the Kamchatka coast, and the next 

 day another in the Okhotsk Sea, near the mouth of the Aangan River. 

 On October 1 this species was very common about the southern end of the 

 Kurils, on both the inside and outside of the chain. 



Clark believed that the birds were more abundant than these 

 notes indicate, because they are very shy and not readily observed. 



Stejneger (1885) reported that the species is not a rare visitor 

 to the Commander Islands, and he, too, considered them "re- 

 markably shyer than D. nigripes." 



Nelson (1887) also considered them shy, though "natives 

 of Alexandrovak sometimes spear them from their kayaks." 



According to Otto Geist (in Murie 1936), in earlier days, 

 near St. Lawrence Island, these birds "... were often caught 

 on the pack ice near the island. This was often easy because 

 the birds were very fat and could hardly make their way in the 



air." 



Today, the short-tailed albatross is rare, or extinct. Although 

 Nelson had reported it as common in Bering Strait and noted it 

 at St. Lawrence Island, in 1887, Otto Geist, in the course of 

 archeological work on St. Lawrence Island from 1926 to 1935, 

 did not see this bird. However, bones were found in excavations, 



