44 BULLETIN 121, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



den transition from snowdrifts to flowers is one of the charms of an 

 arctic summer. On the crest of the cliffs it was blowing so hard that 

 it seemed dangerous to venture too near the edge, but I crawled down 

 into a sheltered gully where I could watch the graceful fulmars sail- 

 ing in and out below me, to and from their nesting ledges, or see 

 them bedded in a large flock offshore. Besides the murres beiow, 

 they had other neighbors; little groups of horned puffins, pigeon 

 guillemots and paroquet auklets were sitting on the ledges all about 

 me or flying to and from their nests in the crevices in the rocbsu 

 As the fulmars flew below me I could plainly see the mottled back, 

 supposed to be the character of rodgersi; there were also many plain 

 light birds and a great variety of color patterns, which raised the 

 question in my mind whether the so-called characters of this species 

 represent anything more than individual variations in Fuhnm^us 

 glacialis glupischa. 



The fulmars were sitting on their nests, or rather on their single 

 •eggs, for they build no nests. The eggs were laid on the bare rock, 

 wherever suitable ledges or little shelves were available, but they 

 were widely scattered. Many incubating birds were in sight at 

 various points, but none of the eggs were accessible or even approach- 

 able. I had to be content with distant views. Once I saw what I 

 thought was a courtship performance ; a bird, presumably a female, 

 was sitting on a ledge when a male flew up and alighted beside her ; 

 with his beak wide open and his head thrown back until it pointed 

 straight upwards, he slowly waved his head from side to side utter- 

 ing a soft, guttural, croaking note; after this short ceremony the 

 pair sat quietly together on the ledge for some time. 



For nearly all of our knowledge regarding the nesting habits of 

 the Rodgers fulmar we are indebted to Mr. Henry W. Elliott (1880) ; 

 the following extract from his notes has been often quoted : 



This is the only representative of the Procellarinae I have seen on or about 

 the Pribylov Islands. It repairs to the cliffs, especially on the south and east 

 shores of St. George; conies very early in the season, and selects some rocky 

 shelf, secure from all enemies save man, where, making no nest whatever, 

 but squatting on the rock itself, it lays a single, large, white, oblong-oval egg, 

 and immediately commences the duty and the labor of incubation. It is of 

 all the water-fowl tlie most devoted to its charge, for it will not be scared 

 from the egg by any demonstration that may be made in the way of throwing 

 rocks or yelling, and it will even die as it sits rather than take flight, asi 

 I have frequently witnessed. The fulmar lays about the 1st to the 5th of 

 June. The egg is very palatable, fully equal to that of our domestic duck ; 

 indeed, it is somewhat like it. The natives prize them highly, and hence 

 they undertake at St. George to gather their eggs by a method and a sus- 

 pension supremely hazardous, as they lower themselves over cliffs five to seven 

 hundred feet above the water. The sensation experienced by myself, when 

 dangled over these precipices attached to a slight thong of raw-hide, with the 

 surf boiling and churning three or four hundred feet below, and loose rocks 



