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, Eat. 55 0 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 :> “On Jilly 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, indicting severe nips with its powerful mandibles. Where 
there were no rock slides on the side ot 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. 
2 Pacific Coast Avifauna, No. 1, 1900 . p. 6. 
1517 
