BULLETIN 



NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



VOL. VI. JANUARY, l88o. No. I. 



DOOR-YARD BIRDS OF THE FAR NORTH. 



BY E. W. NELSON. 



Deprived by confining duties of the opportunity for fre- 

 quent excursions, I have passed many pleasant hours in the com- 

 panionship of my feathered friends, that, happily, in place of 

 requiring to be sought out. appear to become the seekers and 

 find me. Before we proceed, however, let me introduce the 

 surroundings. The locality is St. Michael's, Alaska, which, 

 thanks to its 63 of north latitude and relative geographical 

 position, enjoys a sub-arctic climate, if enjoyment can be ex- 

 tracted from gloomv skies and a barren, gale-swept coast. The 

 Redoubt, as it is familiarly termed here, is built about twenty 

 feet above high-tide mark upon a small point of St. Michael's 

 Island extending into a narrow bay three miles wide, which 

 makes in from Norton Sound, and separates this part of the 

 island from the mainland. About a dozen, low, one-story houses, 

 mainly ranged in the form of a imperfect parallelogram some 

 thirty-five by fifty yards in diameter, with the breaks between 

 the houses closed by a high board fence, and the remainder of 

 the buildings scattered irregularly outside, go to complete the 

 metropolis of Northern Alaska. On the land side, extending to 

 within a few feet of the houses, is the perennially wet land so 

 eminently characteristic of Arctic countries. Fortunately, how- 

 ever, owinof to the more fertile character of the soil in the 



