LIFE HISTORIES OP NORTH AMERICAN WILD FOWL 103 



America come veiy close together and perhaps overlap, with a good 

 chance for hybridizing or intergrading as subspecies. 



Some interesting specimens have been taken in eastern waters 

 which are worth considering. Hagernp (1891) mentions specimens 

 of Soniateria mollisshna^ taken by Holboell in Greenland, which 

 showed the black lancet-shaped figure on the throat so characteristic 

 of S. v-nigra. Holboell supposed that these were hybrids with S. 

 spectabilis which also has this black V. Mr. Arthur H. Norton 

 (1897) obtained several specimens of immature males of S. dresseri 

 on the coast of Maine, from which he inferred " that the black lancet 

 is a character of frequent occurrence in the young drakes of S. 

 dresseri; and there are strong reasons for the belief that it occurs 

 in S. mollisshna horealis.'''' Mr. W. A. Stearns (1883) obtained 

 similar specimens on the coast of Labrador and even recorded the 

 Pacific eider as of regular occurrence there. The occasional appear- 

 ance of this mark in immature males might perhaps indicate an 

 occasional cross between two species, but it seems more reasonable 

 to regard it as a reversion to an ancestral type, which would mean 

 that at some date, probably not very remote, these three eiders be- 

 longed to a single species and perhaps even now they are merely 

 intergrading subspecies. In this connection I would refer the reader 

 to Dr. Charles W. Townsend's (1916ff) interesting paper and plate 

 showing inter gradation between S. moUissma horealis and S. dresseri. 



Whatever the S3'stematic status of the Pacific eider may prove to 

 be, its habits and its lift historj^ are practically the same as those 

 of the Atlantic species, and nearly everything that has been written 

 about the latter would apply equally well to the former. Therefore 

 I shall not attempt to write a full life history of this species, which 

 would be largely repetition. 



Nesting. — By the time that we reached the Aleutian Islands, early 

 in June, the vast horde of eiders that winter in the open waters 

 of this region had departed, to return to their extensive breeding 

 grounds farther north. But we found the Pacifip eider well dis- 

 tributed, as a breeding bird, on all of the islands west of Unalaska. 

 They were particularly abundant about Kiska Harbor in small flocks 

 and mated pairs. They frequented the roclry beaches at the bases 

 of the cliffs, where they sat on the loose rocks, fed in the kelp beds 

 about them, and built their nests among the large boulders above 

 high-water mark. Here on June 19, 1911, I examined two nests of 

 this species; one, containing 5 fresh eggs, was concealed in a hollow 

 under or between two tufts of tall, rank grass which grew back of 

 a large boulder on the beach at the foot of a high grassy cliff; the 

 other, containing 4 fresh eggs, was hidden in the long grass at the 

 top of a steep grassy slope ; both nests were well supplied with down. 



