146 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN DIVING BIRDS 



Casual records. Koren saw a pair and shot one at Idlidlja Island, 

 near Koliutschin Bay, northeastern Siberia. 

 Egg dates. Howkan, Alaska; 1 record, May 23. 



Brachyramphus brevirostris (Vigors) 

 KITTLITZ'S MURRELET 



HABITS 



Until within recent years this murrelet has always been considered 

 a very rare bird in American waters. Mr. E. W. Nelson (1887) 

 secured the "first example of this rare bird known to exist in any 

 American museum in Unalaska Harbor the last of May, 1877. The 

 birds were in company with S. antiquus and B. marmoratus, and, like 

 the former, were not shy. Their habits appeared to be the same, all 

 feeding upon small Crustacea. These three species kept about the 

 outer bays all the last half of May, but about the first of June became 

 scarce, as they sought their breeding places. Since my capture Mr. 

 Turner has taken another specimen in the Aleutian Islands, and the 

 species may be found more common there when the islands have been 

 more thoroughly explored." Mr. Turner's (1886) bird was taken 

 in the same region on April 24, 1879, and he "observed several of 

 these birds to the westward of Unalaska Island. They were not rare 

 on Amchitka Island and in the neighborhood of the Old Harbor, on 

 Atkha Island." These birds were probably migrants from a winter 

 home somewhere on the Asiatic side of the Pacific Ocean to their 

 breeding grounds on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula. We 

 spent the whole month of June, in 1911, cruising the whole length 

 of the Aleutian chain and visiting many of the islands, without seeing 

 a single Kittlitz's murrelet, or anything that looked like one, though 

 we were constantly on the lookout for them. 



The Alexander Alaska Expedition of 1907 deserves the credit for 

 discovering the center of abundance of this species (which can now 

 no longer be considered very rare) in Glacier Bay and vicinity. Dr. 

 Joseph Grinnell (1909) quotes Mr. Dixon's notes, as follows: 



We saw at least 500 of these gray murrelets in one flock. They were feeding 

 in the channels among the numerous islands that lie near the mouth of the bay. 

 Their principal diet was a slippery, sluglike animal about an inch long. A num- 

 ber of immature birds were seen, but they formed only a small proportion of the 

 whole. These murrelets get off the water far more rapidly than do the marbled 

 murrelets. They seem to come up flying. Their flight is much swifter than the 

 other murrelets and they were much wilder. A large flock started by us and 

 we began shooting. Sometimes we would drop a bird and all the rest of the 

 flock would settle right down, so that we thought we had killed the whole bunch 

 until we came to pick them up. 



