258 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 217 



distances, the fact will remain that many birds have reached Barrow 

 after long travel over country in which their ability to exist comes 

 to us as a surprise. 



By comparison most of the visitors to Anaktuvuk (see p. 253) are 

 known to nest within 100 miles of that locality and none were more 

 than 300 miles from their normal nesting range. In distance from 

 regular nesting grounds they resemble only the end of the list of oc- 

 casional birds at Barrow, and no bird was as far from its proper 

 nesting place as were the birds of 15 species which have been recorded 

 at Barrow. 



The presence of strange birds at Barrow and the lack of them at 

 Anaktuvuk is apparently characteristic of each locality, for it does 

 not seem possible that such a great disparity in phenomena can be 

 ascribed to difference in intensity of observation. Point Barrow is 

 unique because it is the northernmost continental locality in the 

 western arctic. The promontory is worked by conflicting ocean cur- 

 rents that deposit along the coast to the west of Barrow, driftwood 

 originating in the Yukon Valley and to the east driftwood from the 

 valley of the Mackenzie (Giddings 1952) and often the coasts on 

 each side of Barrow have such differing ice conditions that ships have 

 to wait for a change before rounding the point. It is near the 

 eastern end of the annual migration of Pacific walrus. Many older 

 villages have occupied the locality, which in the past has evidently 

 attracted people to settle there during several cultural periods. These 

 characteristics indicate that Barrow has been an important point in 

 the distribution of animals and man. 



Land birds may concentrate at a promontory and they are likely 

 to be attracted to the dwellings of people in a landscape otherwise 

 little marked. These circumstances concentrate stray birds and lead 

 to their observation, but they do not explain why the birds went so 

 far from their regular haunts, traversing a country far different from 

 the normal experience of their populations. It is not possible to in- 

 voke storms or weather as causes which could divert them for such 

 distances and through such a diversity of terrain and local weather 

 as they must have passed. At present we must take the appearance of 

 numerous strange birds at Barrow as an interesting fact we cannot 

 yet connect with the rest of our knowledge of the geographical dis- 

 tribution of birds. 



It is these strange birds which make the Barrow avifauna more 

 numerous than that in the other localities. Among the birds normally 

 found at Barrow are several of the maritime birds so numerous on 

 Bering Sea. These birds are absent from the interior, and relatively 

 few are found along the coast eastward from Barrow. Few land 



