146 BULLETIN 107, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
Casual records.—Koren saw a pair and shot one at Idlidlja Island, 
near Koliutschin Bay, northeastern Siberia. 
Egg dates—Howcan, Alaska; 1 record, May 23. Near Nome, 
Alaska: 1 record, June 10. 
BRACHYRAMPHUS BREVIROSTRIS (Vigors). 
KITTLITZ’S MURRELET, 
HABITS. 
Until within recent years this murrelet has always been considered 
a very rare bird in American waters. Mr. E. W. Nelson (1887) 
secured the “ first example of this rare bird known to exist in any 
American museum—in Unalaska Harbor the last of May, 1877. The 
birds were in company with S. antiquus and B. marmoratus, and, like 
the latter, were not shy. Their habits appeared to be the same, all 
feeding upon small crustacea. These three species kept about the 
outer bays all the last half of May, but about the first of June became 
scarce, as they sought their breeding places. Since my capture Mr. 
Turner has taken another specimen in the Aleutian Islands, and the 
species may be found more common there when the islands have been 
more thoroughly explored.” Mr. Turner’s (1886) bird was taken 
in the same region on April 24, 1879, and he “observed several of 
these birds to the westward of Unalashka Island. They were not rare 
on Amchitka Island and in the neighborhood of the Old Harbor, on 
Atkha Island.” These birds were probably migrants from a winter 
home somewhere on the Asiatic side of the Pacific Ocean to their 
breeding grounds on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula. We 
spent the whole month of June, in 1911, cruising the whole length 
of the Aleutian chain and visiting many of the islands, without seeing 
a single Kittlitz’s murrelet, or anything that looked like one, though 
we were constantly on the lookout for them. 
The Alexander Alaska Expedition of 1907 deserves the credit for 
discovering the center of abundance of this species (which can now 
no longer be considered very rare) in Glacier Bay and vicinity. 
Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1909) quotes Mr. Dixon’s notes, as follows: 
We saw at least 500 of these gray murrelets in one flock. They were feeding 
in the channels among the numerous islands that lie near the mouth of the bay. 
Their principal diet was a slippery, sluglike animal about an inch long. A num- 
ber of immature birds were seen, but they formed only a small proportion of the 
whole. These murrelets get off the water far more rapidly than do the marbled 
murrelets. They seem to come up flying. Their flight is much swifter than the 
other murrelets and they were much wilder. A large flock started by us and 
we began shooting. Sometimes we would drop a bird and all the rest of the 
flock would settle right down, so that we thought we had killed the whole bunch 
until we came to pick them up. 
