FAUNA OF THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS AND ALASKA PENINSULA 63 



of these islands, the foxes had forced the birds to nest on offshore 

 islets, and on Attu the natives hunted them extensively and do- 

 mesticated them, clipping the wings of young birds. Jochelson 

 (1933) says: "Some of them breed on the Four Mountain Is- 

 lands." 



Bill Dirks, Atka chief, mentioned as former nesting grounds: 

 Tanadak, Unak, and Tanaklak (all near Great Sitkin), as well as 

 Amchitka, Ulak, Tanadak (the one near Kavalga), and Kiska. 

 He also stated that at one time there had been a native village 

 on Bulclir, and that the villagers used to pinion young geese 

 to prevent them from migrating in the fall so that they would 

 be available later in winter. Dirks recalled that his father once 

 obtained 50 goslings on Buldir, and brought them to Atka, where 

 he fattened them for food. Nelson (1887) saw a flock of do- 

 mesticated geese at Unalaska, which had been obtained in the 

 western Aleutians. 



We must include Attu in the breeding range, for it was on that 

 island that Beck collected the nesting goose examined by Aldrich 

 and identified as minima. Evidently a few geese have been able 

 to nest in spite of foxes, and in primitive times undoubtedly a 

 great many nested there. 



As late as 1911, Wetmore reported at Kiska "Two flocks of 

 rather good-sized geese were seen flying over high up June 18. 

 One of the officers reported seeing two on an inland lake. None 

 were taken." And, again at Atka, he reported, "a flock of geese 

 seen flying high up June 13." 



Austin H. Clark (1910) has presented a striking picture of 

 geese in abundance : 



This goose is the most abundant bird on Agattu, where it breeds by 

 thousands. When we approached the shore we saw a number of geese fly- 

 ing about the cliffs and bluffs, and soaring in circles high in air. On landing 

 I walked up the beach to the left and soon came to a small stream which 

 enters the sea through a gap in the high bluffs, when I saw fifty or more 

 of these birds along the bank preening their feathers. From this point I 

 walked inland over the rough pasture-like country toward a lake where 

 this stream rises. Geese were seen on all sides in great abundance, walking 

 about the grassy hillsides in companies of six or eight to a dozen, or flying 

 about from one place to another. 



Migration 



As would be expected, in the days when the lesser Canada 

 goose and the Alaskan cackling goose flourished there was an east 

 and a west migration along the Aleutian chain. In 1925, Donald 

 Stevenson, former reservation warden, said that geese from the 

 western Aleutians came eastward in the fall to join the throngs 



