to the sea-shore;" and he remarks upon the contrast in habits be- 

 tween it and the spectacled eider, this species nesting in solitary- 

 pairs, the other gregariously. The king eider resembles the Pacific 

 in nesting habits, and is said by Murdoch to be the most anundant 

 spring bird on the Arctic seaboard. Murdoch devotes much space 

 in his Report of the Expedition to Point Barrow to an account of the 

 manners of these ducks, and to their service to the people. 



The red-backed sandpipers come to the tundras about the middle 

 of May, when the notes of the males "fall upon the ear like the mellow 

 tinkle of large water-drops falling rapidly into a partly filled vessel." 



One may also see on the tundra the active buff-breasted sand- 

 piper, greenish black on the upper parts and yellowish buff below, 

 whose eggs are paler and much more distinctly spotted and streaked. 

 Murdoch writes of their pretty manners as follows : 



A favorite trick is to walk along with one wing stretched to its fullest 

 extent and held high in the air. I have frequently seen solitary birds doing 

 this fcr their own amusement, when they had no spectators of their own kind. 

 Two will occasionally meet and spar like fighting-cocks for a few minutes, 

 and then rise together like "towering" birds, with legs hanging loose. 

 A single bird will sometimes stretch himself up to his full length, spread his 

 wings forward, and puff out his throat, making a sort of clucking noise, while 

 one or two others stand by, and apparently admire him. 



Of the beautifully costumed turnstones two species are observ- 

 able, the common one and the black; the latter is by far the more 

 numerous of the two along the shore of Bering Sea, but seems never 

 to visit the Arctic coast, where the common turnstone is rare. Both 

 search for insects, etc., among the pebbles of the beaches, pushing 

 aside or turning over the stones to get at the little crustaceans and 

 other edible creatures hiding beneath them. 



ALEUTIAN DISTRICT (D) 



Mr. Nelson's account in this book of the birds of the northern 

 coasts, supplemented by Mr. Bent's biography of the Tufted Puffin, 

 leaves little that needs to be said in respect to the Aleutian Dis- 

 trict — that chain of lonely, volcanic, storm-swept islands which are 

 the half-submerged summits of the mighty Alaskan Mountains ex- 

 tended westward nearly to the Asiatic coast. Those quaint sea-fowl, 

 the puffins, auks, and guillemots, are the characteristic birds of the 

 coasts, wherever they are high and precipitous, and a picture of 

 their general characteristics is presented in Mr. Bent's paper on the 

 sea-parrot (page 49). The breeding-habits of all much resemble 

 those of the sea-parrot, yet vary with circumstances. On islands 

 where foxes abound, for example, their nests are placed on the highest 



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