NOTES ON BIRDS OBSERVED DURING A BRIEF VISIT 



TO THE ALEUTIAN ISLANDS AND 



BERING SEA IN 191 1 



By a. C. bent 



I. Introduction 



At the suggestion of Dr. Leonard C. Sanford, of New Haven, 

 Conn., and with his financial assistance, I undertook to organize and 

 conduct an expedition to the Aleutian Islands during the season of 

 191 1. It was our intention to charter a suitable vessel and spend the 

 entire summer in making a thorough biological survey of the whole 

 Aleutian chain, exploring all of the larger and more important islands 

 as thoroughly as the time and the facilities at our disposal would per- 

 mit. But since the Biological Survey of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture desired to cooperate with us and to send a man to collect for 

 them, and as the Smithsonian Institution was interested in helping 

 me secure material for additional volumes of the publication on Life 

 Histories of North American Birds, it seemed best to make it a 

 government expedition and accept the courtesy of the Treasury 

 Department in offering transportation on a revenue cutter. We 

 therefore abandoned our plans for a private expedition and the 

 revenue cutter Tahoma was detailed to care for our party, which con- 

 sisted of Rollo H. Beck, of San Jose, Cal., Alexander Wetmore, of 

 Lawrence, Kan.. Fred B. McKechnie, of Boston. Mass., and the 

 w^riter. 



We sailed from Seattle on May 19, and took the inside passage 

 north to Ketchikan, where we remained a few days to take on some 

 spar buoys, and from there we sailed out through Dixon Entrance 

 and nearly west across the Pacific Ocean to Unimak Pass. We 

 entered the Pass on June 4, anchored for one night at Akun Island 

 and reached Unalaska on June 5. After discharging our cargo and 

 coaling, we started on the western trip among the Aleutian Islands on 

 Tune 10, with orders for the Tahoma to return to Unalaska on July 

 "i. This gave us less than three weeks in which to explore over 800 

 miles of difficult islands, an undertaking for which three months 

 would have been hardly time enough. We cruised the whole length 

 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 56, No. 32 



k 



