Nov., 1900] BIRDS OF THl' KOTZEBUE SOUND REGION. 9 



by a single jaeger, which kept the gulls at a distance. This jaeger, or possibly 

 the birds of a pair alternating, devoured the flies which were attracted by the 

 putrifying carcass, and, when they could be detached, fragments of the blubber 

 itself. The jaegers are frequently attacked and pursued to a distance by curlew, 

 terns and sandpipers, when the nests of these birds are approached too closely. 

 These smaller birds are always successful in driving off the jaegers, which exhibit 

 little courage except when in pursuit of the gulls whom they seem sure of intimi- 

 dating. The jaegers often alight on the ground, usually selecting as a perch the 

 highest hummock in the vicinity. The manner of this species in holding its head 

 far back when roosting and thus showing its conspiciously white breast, render 

 the birds visible a long distance on the level plain. In the Kowak delta, Dr. 

 Coffin found a nest of this species on June 17th. It was simply a shallow depres- 

 sion in the moss on slightly higher ground than its surroundings, and contained 

 two eggs, incubation advanced. These are ovate, and measure 2.05x145, 2.00x1.45. 

 Their ground-color is dark olive-buff, coarsely spotted, forming a wreath at the 

 large end, with Front's brown, bistre and drab. On June 20, I found a similar 

 nest, but with only one egg nearly ready to hatch. This measures 2.16x1.56, and 

 is dark olive buff", with spots of Front's brown and drab shell markings, most 

 numerous at the large end. In both instances the nest was located by watching 

 the birds whose restless ffight and other uneasy actions plainly indicated its 

 approximate situation. The birds would frequently alight on the ground, each 

 time nearer the nest, until finally one of the birds would settle on the eggs. A 

 juvenile male Long-tailed Jaeger, taken on July 30, '98, near Cape Blossom, is 

 about one-third grown, and quantities of a drab-grey down still adhere to the 

 plumage of the head and lower parts. The upper parts are slate grey, the feath- 

 ers tipped with clay-color, and the upper and lower tail-coverts barred with the 

 same. The plumage of the breast and sides, as seen beneath the down, is a much 

 lighter smoke-grey, the feathers faintly white-tipped. The ffanks are barred with 

 pale clay-color. The native name for the Jaegers is Ish-o"bng-uk'. 



J\!ssa tridactyla pollicaris Ridgw. 



Facific Kittiwake. 



This gull was noted numerously all along the sea-coast and among the ice-floes 

 northeastward from Bering Straits. I did not see it away from salt water, and it 

 was not even observed in Hothain Inlet. At Chamisso Island the kittiwakes were 

 nesting in large numbers, and on July 9th the eggs were well advanced in incu- 

 bation. I saw no nests containing more than two eggs, and many nests held but 

 one. The nests consisted of a wet, muddy mass of deca3dng grasses, adhering to 

 narrow ledges and projecting points of rock frequently so limited in extent as to 

 make it appear as though the nest were stuck to the face of the cliff" like a Barn 

 Swallow's. The neatly-moulded, saucer-shaped nest-cavity was lined with dry 

 grasses. As I was let slowly down the face of a cliff' at the end of a rope, the sit- 

 ting kittiwakes beneath me would allow me to approach very closely before 

 launching from their nests. They would leave with a few peculiar shrill cries, 

 and hover about me or soar back and forth along the cliff', while the ever-circling 

 files and swarms of murres and puffins out over the water, was enough to bewilder 



