The cliffs and ragged islands of this southern coast of Alaska 

 harbor many members of those quaint tribes of small sea-birds, the 

 pufHns, murres, and others of the auk family, which, however, are 

 better represented on the northern coasts, and are described hereafter 

 by Mr. Nelson and Mr. Bent. Among those breeding in crowded 

 colonies south of the Aleutian islands are the tufted puffin (see page 

 49), the rhinoceros, Cassin's, and the crested auklets, the marbled, 

 ancient, and Kittlitz's murrelets,- and the Californian and the black 

 guillemots. The pigeon, paroquet, and least auklets appear only as 

 migrants in winter. 



George Willett notes that the burrows of the rhinoceros auklets, 

 birds found by him to be common about Sitka Sound, and nesting 

 in a numerous colony on St. Lazaria Island in company with many 

 tufted puffins, are entirely different in situation and construction 

 from those of any other of the birds dwelling there. Their burrows 

 are' much larger than those of the petrels, and longer than those 

 of the puffins, from which they differ also in situation. St. Lazaria 

 Island is a Federal bird-reservation, and the auklet colony "is well up 

 toward the top of the island among the timber, and the burrows fre- 

 quently run under logs and among the roots of trees.'' 



Gulls are numerous, as might be expected along such a coast, but 

 no tern is known east of Kadiak Island, and even there the arctic 

 tern alone represents this fine group of diminutive gulls. Those 

 powerful sea-hawks, the jaegers — both the parasitic and the long-tailed 

 — visit this coast in winter, but keep well out at sea, harassing every 

 bird that fishes. Winter gulls, whose summer home is in the north, 

 are the rare ivory gull, the glaucous gull or burgomaster, and Sabine's 

 or the fork-tailed gull. Resident here in summer, nesting on both 

 sandy islets and rock-ledges, are the glaucous-winged gull, the big, 

 world-wandering herring gull, with its snowy head and black wing- 

 tips, the short-billed, and the familiar black-headed, white-tailed, 

 Bonaparte's gull. 



Gulls' nests are very simple structures — sometimes nothing at 

 all^ — and large colonies often breed together both on the sea shore 

 and on the beaches of inland lakes. Their eggs are blotched and 

 marbled with various tints, from lavender to deep red-brown. 



Other oceanic birds, seen by voyagers, but rarely near shore, 

 are the shooty shearwater, Fisher's, the fork-tailed, and Leach's pe- 

 ll 



