LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN PETRELS AND PELICANS. 279 

 PHALACROCORAX URILE (Gmclin). 

 RED-FACED CORMORANT. 



HABITS. 



Walrus Island, one of the Pribilof group in Bering Sea, the home 

 of the red-faced cormorant, is without exception the most interesting 

 bird island I have ever seen. Although situated only 7 miles to 

 the eastward of St. Paul Island, it is well isolated and protected by 

 the prevailing fogs and storms of that forbidding region, for it is 

 only during the calmest weather that a landing may be effected on 

 its rugged shores. It is a small, low, rocky islet of less than 5 acres 

 in area, not over a quarter of a mile long, and less than 80 yards wide, 

 formed mainly of flat volcanic rock and lava in a series of shelves 

 and low cliffs extending in an irregular outline down to and into 

 the water. Portions of the island are covered with great masses 

 of water-worn boulders of various sizes, piled up indiscriminately 

 by the action of the sea, under which hundreds of paroquet, crested, 

 and least auklets, as well as tufted and horned puffins, find suitable 

 nesting sites. The accumulation of guano for many generations, 

 perhaps for centuries, has formed sufficient soil on the higher por- 

 tions of the island to support a luxuriant growth of grass in compact 

 tufts. Here the ground is so honeycombed with the nesting burrows 

 of tufted puffins that it is impossible to walk without constantly 

 breaking into them ; here also a large colony of glaucous and glaucous- 

 winged gulls build their nests among the tufts of grass. But all 

 of these are as nothing compared with the vast hordes of California 

 and Pallas murres which resort to this wonderful little island to 

 breed. All around the rocky shores every available bare spot above 

 high-water mark is literally covered with them, thousands and thou- 

 sands of them, sitting as close as they can sit on the rocks, on the 

 cliffs, and on the bare ground above them. 



The day we landed, July 7, 1911, was perfectly calm and the 

 sea was as smooth as glass; we stepped out of our dory onto a flat 

 shelf of rock as easily as if it were a wharf. As we walked out 

 among the murre colonies they scarcely moved enough to allow us 

 to pass and it was not until we almost stepped on them that they 

 decided to leave and went pouring off in swarms down into the 

 water. They soon returned and circled about the island, a constant, 

 steady stream of whirling birds. A cloud of great white gulls were 

 hovering overhead screaming constantly and downy young gulls 

 were running about in the grass. The lively little auklets werd 

 chattering beneath the rocks or scrambling out from under them to 

 fly off to sea. Grotesque puffins, disturbed in their burrows, made 

 ludicrous attempts to escape by bounding along the ground in an 



