260 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BXJLLETIN 217 



coast of Alaska from Flaxman Island to Demarcation Point, some 

 250 miles northeast of Anaktuvuk; (5) the arctic coast of Yukon 

 Territory, about 350 miles east by north; and (6) Barrow, about 

 250 miles north. 



I believe that the small number of species reported on the eastern 

 Alaskan (58 species) and Yukon coasts (52 species) is significant 

 of the true situations there. While observers and collections have 

 been few, Anderson (1921), Dixon (1943), and Brooks (1915) each 

 spent the cycle of the seasons there. They were skillful and energetic 

 naturalists and I think it unlikely that they missed much. Reading 

 their records impresses me with their reliability as indices of an 

 avifauna which is meager in species and probably in numbers. Their 

 records agree with information I have derived from Nunamiut and 

 other Eskimo accounts. 



While birds of strict maritime habits are absent from the arctic 

 interior, some loons, ducks, certain sandpipers, jaegers, and gulls that 

 in winter are maritime birds on the Pacific coast and adjoining islands 

 migrate in summer to nest in the interior of arctic Alaska and Yukon. 



Of the four species which migrate from the continent of Asia to 

 nest in Alaska only wheatears {Oenanthe oenanthe oenanthe) were 

 found at Old Crow. We did not find Kennicott's willow warbler 

 {Phylloscopus horealis kennicotti) , Alaska yellow wagtails {Motacil- 

 la -fiava tschutschensis) and red-spotted bluethroats (Luscinia svecica 

 svecica), nor do they appear on Rand's (1946) list of Yukon birds. 

 On the eastern arctic coast of Yukon only wheatears and wagtails 

 among the Asiatic birds have been reported. Thus the migration of 

 these land birds from Asia hardly carries them beyond Alaska on 

 the American continent. 



There is a difference in the ducks of arctic Yukon and Alaska in 

 that the proportion of lesser scaup {Ay thy a afjinis) to greater scaup 

 {Aythya marila nearctica) at Old Crow was about like the propor- 

 tion of greater to lesser scaup at Anaktuvuk. Golden-eyes {Buce- 

 phala clangula and islandica) , common at Old Crow, do not appear 

 to reach arctic Alaska. 



The species and individuals of plovers and sandpipers at Old Crow 

 were fewer than at Anaktuvuk and Kobuk and except for snipe 

 {Oapella gcdlinago)^ yellowlegs {Totanus flavipes) and solitary sand- 

 pipers {Tringa solitaria cinnamomea) none of their populations were 

 numerous. In Rand's (1946) list only 16 species of sandpipers are 

 reported from all Yukon. The common coastal forms seem seldom 

 to migrate through interior Yukon, although many traverse Alaska 

 at Anaktuvuk and Kobuk. In the Mackenzie Delta Porsild (1943) 

 reported only 11 species of sandpipers. 



