98 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS 



Alaskan or Pacific puffin would be far more appropriate. This is only 

 one of many misnomers in our nomenclature of North American 

 birds. 



Spring. Mr. E. W. Nelson (1887) says: 



At the Fur Seal Islands these birds arrive about the 10th of May, in pairs, 

 but near St. Michaels I have never seen them before the 10th of June and rarely 

 before the 20th of that month. At the latter place and at other northern points 

 their arrival is governed by the date when the ice leaves the coast for the 

 summer. 



Nesting. The northernmost colony on which I have any notes is 

 on Puffin Island, a small, precipitous rocky islet near Chamisso 

 Island, in Kotzebue Sound, which is now a reservation. Dr. Joseph 

 Grinnell (1900) visited this colony and made the following report: 



On July 9, 1899, I spent the afternoon and night on Chamisso Island. On 

 this island and a smaller detached one bearing northwest from it, the horned 

 puffins were breeding in immense numbers. Their nest burrows were dug in 

 the earth on top of the islands, principally on the verge of the bluffs. These bur- 

 rows were from 1 to 3 feet in length, with an enlarged nest cavity at the end. 

 The eggs generally lay on the bare ground, but there was often a slight collec- 

 tion of grasses between it and the earth. The parent bird was frequently 

 found on the nest and would sometimes offer courageous resistance to being 

 dragged forth, inflicting severe nips with its powerful mandibles. Where there 

 were rock slides on the side of the island, natural crevices and holes among the 

 fallen bowlders were taken advantage of for nesting sites. In such places eggs 

 were to be found from the surf to the top of the island, and by crawling amongst 

 the bowlders many eggs were discovered, but often in such narrow crevices 

 that they could not be reached. The birds usually flushed from their nesting 

 places before the collector reached them, being probably warned by the vibra- 

 tion of footsteps on the rocks which I noticed to be quite perceptible when one 

 was in a narrow chasm. The eggs laid in these rocky niches were usually pro- 

 vided with a scanty bed of dry grasses. All the eggs secured were fresh and 

 proved more palatable for the table than the murre's eggs. 



Mr. Hersey visited this colony on August 2, 1914, when probably 

 most of the young were hatched, although he found a few eggs. His 

 notes state that he frequently saw a bird leave the host of circling 

 puffins, fly up to the entrance to a burrow, flutter a moment, and then 

 fly off. A minute later a bird would fly out from the nest and soon 

 after the other would fly in to take its place on the nest. Once he 

 saw two birds emerge from one burrow. 



We found the horned puffin widely distributed among the Aleu- 

 tian Islands. There was a small breeding colony on a precipitous 

 rocky headland near the entrance to Chernofsky Harbor, but we 

 could not reach it and had to be content with shooting a few birds 

 as they circled out over us. At Atka Island, on June 15, 1911, we 

 found a small breeding colony on a steep rocky island in Nazan Bay 

 where we saw the birds flying in and out of inaccessible crevices in 

 the cliffs; we were too busy with other more important things to 



