The Horned Puffin 



THREE "records" would give this bird a very slender claim upon our 

 attention, were it not for the suspicion that the Horned Puffin is of regular 

 occurrence off our coasts in winter. The Smith records, especially, would 

 go to show that Horned Puffins may mingle at sea with our own Tufted 

 Puffins, in the proportion of one to six. We cannot hope, however, for any 

 first-hand knowledge beyond that afforded by a battered carcass tossed 

 up from time to time by a repentant sea. 



The species nests as far south as Forrester Island, Lat. 55 North, 

 although at that extreme of its range the Tufted Puffin outnumbers it, 

 according to Professor Heath, 1 some thirty to one. The northernmost 

 colony reported on appears to be that on Chamisso Island, of which Dr. 

 Grinnell has left the following account: 1 "On July 9, '99, I spent the after- 

 noon and night on Chamisso Island. On this island and a smaller detached 

 one bearing northwest from it, the Horned Puffins were breeding in im- 

 mense numbers. Their nest-burrows were dug in the earth on top of the 

 islands, principally on the verge of the bluffs. These burrows were from 

 one to three feet in length, with an enlarged nest cavity at the end. The 

 eggs generally lay on the bare ground, but there was often a slight collec- 

 tion of grasses between it and the earth. The parent bird was frequently 

 found on the nest and would sometimes offer courageous resistance to being 

 dragged forth, inflicting severe nips with its powerful mandibles. Where 

 there were no rock slides on the side of the island, natural crevices and 

 holes among the fallen boulders were taken advantage of for nesting sites. 

 In such places eggs were to be found from the surf to the top of the island, 

 and by crawling amongst the boulders many eggs were discovered, but 

 often in such narrow crevices that they could not be reached. The birds 

 usually flushed from their nesting places before the collector reached them, 

 being probably warned by the vibration of footsteps on the rocks, which I 

 noticed to be quite perceptible when one was in a narrow chasm. The 

 eggs laid in these rocky niches were usually provided with a scanty bed of 

 dry grasses. All the eggs secured were fresh and proved more palatable for 

 the table than murres' eggs. In a series of fifty eggs of the Horned Puffin, 

 there is considerable variation in size and markings. In the large majority 

 the ground color is pure white, but in four eggs it is cream-buff. All the 

 eggs exhibit shell markings, spots, blotches and in a few cases, scrawls of 

 dull lavender. Five of the eggs one would consider at first sight immacu- 

 late, but close scrutiny discloses the shell-markings, though they are 

 extremely pale and few in number. Eight eggs in the series have outer 

 spots and fine dashes of isabella color, and one of them is very closely 

 covered by scrawls and spots, with two large blotches of the same color." 



It is this species and not Lunda cirrhata which has given rise to the 



'The Condor. Vol. XVII., Jan. 1915. 



- Pacific Coast Avifauna, No. I, 1900, p. 6. 



1517 



