The Marbled Murrelet 
tradition has slowly gained credence, and there is an account of an egg, 
now in the collection of Mr. Chas. E. Doe, of Providence, R. I., which was 
taken by Mr. A. H. Durham from 
rocky land some seventy miles north 
of Nome. I am firmly convinced 
that these birds not only nest in or 
upon the sloping sides of western 
mountain ranges, but that they nest 
some numbers on the coastal 
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ranges of California. Here is my 
line of evidence from the beginning: 
At Glacier, on the North Fork of the 
Nooksack River, in the State of 
Washington, and near the foot of 
Mount Baker, having risen before 
daybreak for an early bird-walk, 
on the morning of May nth, 1905, 
I heard voices from an invisible 
party of Marbled Murrelets high 
in air as they proceeded down the 
valley, as though to repair to the 
sea for the day’s fishing. It was too 
late in the season for migratory 
flight, and the Murrelets are not 
known to visit interior waters, at 
least in the summer season. 
The Quileute Indians, of the 
west Washington coast, claim that 
the Marbled Murrelet, the Tichaah- 
lukchtih, does not nest like the other 
sea-fowl, upon the rocky islets, the 
Olympiades, but that it colonizes 
upon some of the higher slopes of the 
Olympic Mountains, where they lay their eggs in burrows; and one of their 
number claims to have come upon such a colony several years ago while 
hunting in company with a white man. I have toured the Olympiades 
three different seasons in Indian canoes, and I found my Indian guides 
infallible in the identification of sea-birds. The Marbled Murrelet cer¬ 
tainly does not nest on any of the islands, where birds of thirteen other 
species are known to breed. 
Of the Marbled Murrelet as a possible summer resident of California 
we have only the following scanty references: “We have quite a number 
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arc; 
MARBLED MURRELETS 
