LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN GULLS AND TERNS. 37 



Mr. W. Elmer Ekblaw, in his Greenland notes, says : 



About June 10 the kittiwake begins mating. The rivalry for mates and nests 

 is keen, and the struggles over the nests are bitter and prolonged. I watched 

 two birds fight for a nest for over an hour. When one alighted upon the nest 

 he turned at once with open bill and angry scream to meet the rival which he 

 expected to attack him at once. Usually the other claimant for the nest was 

 quick in his attempt to eject the first. With bills locked like the jaws of 

 fighting bull terriers, they wrestled with each other, shaking and tugging and 

 pulling fiercely until they fell off the ledge and fluttered to the ice still in 

 death grip. Once on the ice they soon ceased their combat, and separated, both 

 angrily screaming. The contest was many times repeated. 



Nesting. — The kittiwake is decidedly an oceanic gull, being seldom 

 seen inland, except as a wanderer on migrations, and breeding on 

 the rocky cliffs and crags of our Arctic coasts exposed to all the fury 

 of ocean storms in which it seems to delight. On the Greenland 

 coast most of the large breeding colonies are on the high cliffs near the 

 heads of deep fjords, but farther south the preference seems to be 

 for lofty rocky islands. 



My first intimate study of the nesting habits of the Atlantic kitti- 

 wake was made on the famous Bird Rocks, in the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence, in 1904, one of the southernmost outposts of its breeding range. 

 We landed here in a small boat, late in the evening of June 23, under 

 rather exciting circumstances. As the great cliffs towered above us 

 in the moonlight we saw a lantern coming down the ladder to show 

 us where to land and we ran in among the breakers. There was a 

 crash which brought us to our feet as we struck an unseen rock ; but 

 the next wave carried us over it and landed us among the rocks and 

 flying spray. We were overboard in an instant, struggling in the 

 surf up to our waists, for the boat was rapidly filling, as wave after 

 wave broke over us. A few moments of rapid work served to unload 

 our baggage and attach a stout line to the boat, the signal was passed 

 aloft and the powerful steam winch above landed her high and dry. 

 After exchanging hearty greetings with our genial host, Captain 

 Bourque, we enjoyed the novel experience of being hoisted up in a 

 crate to the top of the cliff, over 100 feet high. It was certainly a 

 new and interesting sensation to feel ourselves slowly rising in the 

 darkness up the face of these somber cliffs, with the surf thundering 

 on the rocks below us and with a cloud of screaming seabirds hover- 

 ing about us, barely discernible in the moonlight, like a swarm of 

 ghostly bats whose slumber had been disturbed and who were pro- 

 testing at our rude intrusion. 



On the following day the wind was blowing a gale and clouds of 

 sea birds were drifting about the rock in a bewildering maze, 10,000 

 of them in all. There were great white gannets sailing on long pow- 

 erful wings, tipped with black ; clouds of snowy kittiwakes hovering 



