The cliffs and ragged islands of this southern coast of Alaska 
harbor many members of those quaint tribes of small sea-birds, the 
puffins, murres, and others of the auk family, which, however, are 
better represented on the northern coasts, and are described hereafter 
by Mr. Nelson and Mr. Bent. Among those breeding in crowded 
colonies south of the Aleutian islands are the tufted puffin (see page 
49), the rhinoceros, Cassin’s, and the crested auklets, the marbled, 
ancient, and Kittlitz’s murrelets, and the Californian and the black 
guillemots. The pigeon, paroquet, and least auklets appear only as 
migrants in winter. 
George Willett notes that the burrows of the rhinoceros auklets, 
birds found by him to be common about Sitka Sound, and nesting 
in a numerous colony on St. Lazaria Island in company with many 
tufted puffins, are entirely different in situation and construction 
from those of any other of the birds dwelling there. Their burrows 
are much larger than those of the petrels, and longer than those 
of the puffins, from which they differ also in situation. St. Lazaria 
Island is a Federal bird-reservation, and the auklet colony “is well up 
toward the top of the island among the timber, and the burrows fre¬ 
quently run under logs and among the roots of trees.” 
Gulls are numerous, as might be expected along such a coast, but 
no tern is known east of Kadiak Island, and even there the arctic 
tern alone represents this fine group of diminutive gulls. Those 
powerful sea-hawks, the jaegers—both the parasitic and the long-tailed 
—visit this coast in winter, but keep well out at sea, harassing every 
bird that fishes. Winter gulls, whose sum.mer home is in the north, 
are the rare ivory gull, the glaucous gull or burgomaster, and Sabine’s 
or the fork-tailed gull. Resident here in summer, nesting on both 
sandy islets and rock-ledges, are the glaucous-winged gull, the big, 
world-wandering herring gull, with its snowy head and black wing- 
tips, the short-billed, and the familiar black-headed, white-tailed, 
Bonaparte’s gull. 
Gulls’ nests are very simple structures—sometimes nothing at 
all—and large colonies often breed together both on the sea shore 
and on the beaches of inland lakes. Their eggs are blotched and 
marbled with various tints, from lavender to deep red-brown. 
Other oceanic birds, seen by voyagers, but rarely near shore, 
are the shooty shearwater, Fisher’s, the fork-tailed, and Leach’s pe¬ 
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