120 BULLETIN 107, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
the Pribilof Islands from August 20 to September 1. None are 
recorded from California before December 17. 
Casual records.—Recorded as occurring once in Sweden, but ap- 
parently this specimen has been recorded as the crested auklet also, 
and I have had no way of verifying either identification. 
Egg dates—Northern Bering Sea: 3 records, July 20, August 22 
and 26. Pribilof Islands: 3 records, June 8, July 7 and 16. 
4ETHIA CRISTATELLA (Pallas). 
er : CRESTED AUKLET. 
HABITS. 
Among the thousands of tufted puffins that dotted the surface of 
the ocean, as we approached Unimak Pass on our way to Bering Sea, 
and among the great rafts of least auklets that we encountered 
among the Aleutian Islands, we frequently saw small or large flocks 
of crested auklets, sometimes containing as many as 40 or 50 birds, 
which we recognized by their larger size and wholly gray appearance. 
Its manner of flight, size, color, and crest have suggested the local 
name of “sea quail,” from a fancied resemblance to the California 
quail. Mr. H. W. Elliott (1880) refers to this “ fantastic bird ” as 
“the plumed knight of the Pribylov Islands.” The native Aleut 
name, “ cannooskie,” means little captain. 
Nesting.—The crested auklet arrives in the Pribilof Islands early 
in May, where Mr. William Palmer (1899) says that it— 
breeds in colonies of some 10 to 20 pairs on the roughest and usually most 
prominent points on the bluffs, and I think also among the bowlders above 
high tide, and where the egg is placed in the deepest and most inaccessible 
recesses, 
Mr. Elliott (1880) writes: 
So well do these birds succeed in secreting their charge, that although I 
was constantly upon the ground where several thousand pairs were laying, I 
was unable successfully to overturn the rocks under which they hide, and get 
more than four perfect eggs, the sum total of many hundred attempts. 
This species is intimately associated on its breeding grounds with 
the paroquet auklet; it is found everywhere that the latter species is 
found and its nesting habits are exactly the same. The entrance to 
Kiska Harbor, in the Aleutian Islands, is protected by a high prom- 
ontory; at the base of its steep sloping sides great masses of large, 
loose rocks and bowlders line the shores, forming a rough beach and 
offering attractive nesting sites for crested and least auklets, pigeon 
guillemots, Pacific eiders, and perhaps harlequin ducks, all of which 
we found abundant and apparently breeding here. We saw crested 
auklets flying out from these rocks and found their feathers and drop- 
pings in remote crevices under the rocks, but their eggs were too well 
al 
