BULLETIN 
OF THE 
NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 
VOL. VI. JANUARY, l88o. No. I. 
DOOR-YARD BIRDS OF THE FAR NORTH. 
BY E. W. NELSON. 
Deprived by confining duties of the opportunity for fre- 
quent excursions, I have passed many pleasant hours in the com- 
panionship of my feathered friends, that, happily, in place of 
requiring to be sought out, appear to become the seekers and 
find me. Before we proceed, however, let me introduce the 
surroundings. The locality is St. Michael’s, Alaska, which, 
thanks to its 63° of north latitude and relative geographical 
position, enjoys a sub-arctic climate, if enjoyment can be ex- 
tracted from gloomy skies and a barren, gale-swept coast. The 
Redoubt, as it is familiarly termed here, is built about twenty 
feet above high-tide mark upon a small point of St. Michael’s 
Island extending into a narrow bay three miles wide, which 
makes in from Norton Sound, and separates this part of the 
island from the mainland. About a dozen, low, one-story houses, 
mainly ranged in the form of a imperfect parallelogram some 
thirty-five by fifty yards in diameter, with the breaks between 
1 the houses closed by a high board fence, and the remainder of 
the buildings scattered irregularly outside, go to complete the 
metropolis of Northern Alaska. On the land side, extending to 
within a few feet of the houses, is the perennially wet land so 
eminently characteristic of Arctic countries. Fortunately, how- 
ever, owing to the more fertile character of the soil in the 
