to the sea-shore;” and he remarks upon the contrast in habits be¬ 
tween it and the spectacled eider, this species nesting in solitary- 
pairs, the other gregariously. The king eider resembles the Pacific 
in nesting habits, and is said by Murdoch to be the most anundant 
spring bird on the Arctic seaboard. Murdoch devotes much space 
in his Report of the Expedition to Point Barrow to an account of the 
manners of these ducks, and to their service to the people. 
The red-backed sandpipers come to the tundras about the middle 
of May, when the notes of the males “fall upon the ear like the mellow 
tinkle of large water-drops falling rapidly into a partly filled vessel.” 
One may also see on the tundra the active bufif-breasted sand¬ 
piper, greenish black on the upper parts and yellowish buff below, 
whose eggs are paler and much more distinctly spotted and streaked. 
Murdoch writes of their pretty manners as follows: 
A favorite trick is to walk along with one wing stretched to its fullest 
extent and held high in the air. I have frequently seen solitary birds doing 
this fcr their own amusement, when they had no spectators of their own kind. 
Two will occasionally meet and spar like fighting-cocks for a few minutes, 
and then rise together like “towering” birds, with legs hanging loose. 
A single bird will sometimes stretch himself up to his full length, spread his 
wings forward, and puff out his throat, making a sort of clucking noise, while 
one or two others stand by, and apparently admire him. 
Of the beautifully costumed turnstones two species are observ¬ 
able, the common one and the black; the latter is by far the more 
numerous of the two along the shore of Bering Sea, but seems never 
to visit the Arctic coast, where the common turnstone is rare. Both 
search for insects, etc., among the pebbles of the beaches, pushing 
aside or turning over the stones to get at the little crustaceans and 
other edible creatures hiding beneath them. 
ALEUTIAN DISTRICT (D) 
Mr. Nelson’s account in this book of the birds of the northern 
coasts, supplemented by Mr. Bent’s biography of the Tufted Puffin, 
leaves little that needs to be said in respect to the Aleutian Dis¬ 
trict—that chain of lonely, volcanic, storm-swept islands which are 
the half-submerged summits of the mighty Alaskan Mountains ex¬ 
tended westward nearly to the Asiatic coast. Those quaint sea-fowl, 
the puffins, auks, and guillemots, are the characteristic birds of the 
coasts, wherever they are high and precipitous, and a picture of 
their general characteristics is presented in Mr. Bent’s paper on the 
sea-parrot (page 49). The breeding-habits of all much resemble 
those of the sea-parrot, yet vary with circumstances. On islands 
where foxes abound, for example, their nests are placed on the highest 
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