NESTING SEABIRDS OF THE GULF OF ALASKA 



49 



Alaska, arriving off Kayak Island on 11 May 

 1778. Cook was not accompanied by an able 

 naturalist. His surgeon, William Anderson, 

 did have some experience gained on earlier 

 voyages in preparing skins and taking notes, 

 but he had contracted tuberculosis and be- 

 came so ill that even his notes ceased after 8 

 June, while the expedition was in Cook Inlet. 



Cook was under orders to keep a careful rec- 

 ord of everything he saw. One of the results 

 was that he had birds collected even though 

 he had no naturalist to do the work. Several 

 birds were collected in Prince William Sound 

 while Cook's vessels were at anchor in Port 

 Etches. These included two marbled murre- 

 lets (Brachy ramp has marmoratustype 

 specimens), a black oystercatcher, a surfbird 

 (Aphriza uirgata), a surf scoter (Melanitta per- 

 spicillata), and a red-breasted merganser 

 (Mergus serratortype specimen), along with 

 several forest birds (Stresemann 1949). 



The watch journals of Cook and his officers 

 provide some additional information. Captain 

 Charles Clerke (Beaglehole 1974) remarked in 

 his log on the passage out of Prince William 

 Sound through Montague Strait on 20 May 

 that "it had almost become tautology to men- 

 tion whales and seals and innumerable sea 

 fowl that so confoundingly kept their 

 distance." 



Between the Trinity Islands and Chirikof 

 Island on 18 June, Cook's men collected a 

 single tufted puffin. Later Cook passed close 

 to the Semidi Islands and the Shumagin Is- 

 lands and directly through the Sandman 

 Reefs. Beaglehole 's version of this part of the 

 voyage makes no mention of seabirds. 



There is a gap of 87 years during which 

 there is almost no hint of published material 

 bearing on the status of seabirds in the Gulf 

 of Alaska. In 1865 the Russo-American Tele- 

 graph Expedition touched this area. Ball and 

 Bannister (1869) provide us with a few scraps 

 garnered during that expedition, primarily by 

 Bischoff. The glaucous-winged gull (Larus 

 glaucescens) was described as the most com- 

 mon species from California northward. 

 Bischoff 's collections at Kodiak indicate that 

 the horned and tufted puffins were collected 

 with ease. He was able also to collect an Aleu- 

 tian tern (Sterna aleuticatype specimen) 

 along with an egg. 



Dall (1873) noted in 1872 that the black- 



legged kit ti wake (Rissa tridactyla) was com- 

 mon at Round Island and Delarof Harbor, 

 Unga Island, in the Shumagins. The inference 

 is that it was more common at these two 

 places than elsewhere. The Arctic tern (Sterna 

 paradisaea) was abundant in the Shumagin 

 Islands and particularly at Range Island in 

 Popoff Strait. Dall expressed the opinion that 

 the horned puffin was very abundant in the 

 Shumagins and appeared to fill the niche of 

 the tufted puffin, which he did not see there. 

 The only other bird which he thought to be 

 very common was the pigeon guillemot. He 

 did not note the common murre (Uria aalge) at 

 all. 



In 1908 the second of three Alexander Ex- 

 peditions conducted field work in the Prince 

 William Sound area. From Dixon (1908) and 

 Grinnell (1910) we can derive some basis for 

 assessing status in a very general way. The 

 most common seabird noted was the marbled 

 murrelet. Glaucous-winged gulls and black- 

 legged kittiwakes were common; the glau- 

 cous-winged gull was the more common. 

 Horned puffins were judged to be slightly 

 more common than tufted puffins by both 

 authors. The northern end of Montague Strait 

 appears to have been the center of abundance 

 for puffins. Dixon noted that on 16 July 1908 

 there were swarms of puffins in the channel 

 along Green Island. Pigeon guillemots were 

 common along the rocky coasts. Parakeet 

 auklets (Cyclorrhyncus psittacula), common 

 murres, and ancient murrelets were noted 

 only in very small numbers. 



After the Alexander Expeditions there was 

 another doldrum in which little was done. 

 During this lull in activity, a note by Town- 

 send (1913) appeared which compared the 

 numbers of crested auklets (Aethia cristatella) 

 at Yukon Harbor, Big Koniuji Island, to the 

 least auklets (A. pusilla) of St. George Island, 

 stating that the crested auklets were more 

 numerous. He sailed into the Yukon Harbor 

 anchorage on the evening of 1 August and ob- 

 served that crested auklets "were present in 

 myriads. The surface of the water was covered 

 with them, and the air was filled with them." 



The formal record available to researchers 

 is very shallow for this exploratory period. 

 With a few exceptions it was compiled by non- 

 scientists, primarily explorers and egg and 

 skin collectors. 



