The Larger Land-Birds. 
The only game-bird of the region is the white-tailed ptarmigan, 
and its dwelling-place is far up the slopes of the mountains. Neither 
partridge nor pigeon has been noted, except one record of a mourning 
dove. 
Birds of prey, however, find plentiful means of living, and abound 
throughout the coastal district. The almost cosmopolitan marsh 
hawk shows itself occasionally, and probably rears its young among 
the reeds margining one or another of the many lakelets. The sharp- 
shinned hawk is there, and will be likely to increase as civilization 
extends its conquest to the wilderness. The western goshawk and 
the roughleg are to be found, both nesting in tall trees. The western 
redtail is seen occasionally in the south, usually hunting for mice 
about timber-line on the mountains. The bald eagle, according to 
Willett, is the most common raptorial bird of the coast south of St. 
Elias; it is also conspicuously present elsewhere in Alaska. Mr. 
Willett offers the following interesting note upon it at Sitka; 
The nest is always placed near salt water, all those noted being in tall 
coniferous trees. The birds seen in the high mountains during the summer 
were nearly all immature. The young leave the nest late in August. Accord¬ 
ing to Tames Brightman, the eggs are deposited in late April and early May. 
During the early summer these birds apparently subsist to a considerable 
extent on fawns. Several dead eagles examined at this season were gorged 
with fawn-meat, and the claws were covered with hair. The hunters of the 
region claim that the eagle is the worst enemy the deer have, and kill them 
at every opportunity. In the early fall, when the salmon are running up 
the streams to spawn, these birds feed largely on fish, and they may be seen 
in numbers around every salmon-stream. A nest examined in St. Lazaria 
Island in August, 1912, contained the remains of a great number of tufted 
puffins and young glaucous-winged gulls. 
The golden eagle also frequents the sea-fronting cliffs, but is 
more familiar westward; also both forms of the duck hawk. The 
pigeon hawk (of the “black” variety) and the fish hawk complete 
the summer list, but both are rare. 
Of the owls, the short-eared finds excellent nesting-places in the 
thick woods, where also Kennicott’s screech-owl is heard, but neither 
is common. Of the large owls, two are resident—the dusky variety 
of the great horned owl and the gray owl. Both the snowy and 
the hawk owls are to be found in winter among the mountains. 
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