St. Paul, Pribilof: 
13 July 1964 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 20560 
Pear Maryanna and others; 
Today the mail plane comes in (if the fog lifts), so, hoping for some from 
your end., ire ! 11 get some ready to go out. We have been here a ireek today; our 
gear came in on a tourist flight last Friday. Even now our firs' 
live- 
caught shorebird (rock sandpiper) struggles in a mist net across a salt estuary, 
inaccessible till the tide goes down to where we can wade across. A few (less 
than 50 ) ruddy turnstones have been observed daily feeding in this locality. 
So far we have banded nestling gray-crowned rosy finches (they frequent the 
village like sparrows here and are a very large dark race), collected some of 
these, snow buntings, least & crested auklets, rock sandpiper, pigeon guillemot, 
and a blue phase arctic fox. A native named Hicolai Stephanin has a frozen 
northern shrike he got last winter and says he 1 11 give us (new record for these 
islands ?). 
Observations 
cord for Pribilof: 
are too numerous to record here, but include 
an os 
prey (new 
re- 
that’s been around Salt Lagoon for 3 days now. I f ve been 
since we 
n thtj 
f d rather not collect such a bird whose 
murres and black-legged kittiwakes have 
f both puffins, the auklets, and fulmars 
sea 
trying to get a telephoto picture 
identity is so certain. Thick-billed 
eggs in plain view on the cliffs; those o 
are a little better hidden and less accessable. Pied-faced cormorants have eggs 
or small young. The first 2 hours 1 was on this island I got 7 life birds, but 
ip the rest of the week I only added one more. Max*s score about the same. 
Toward the end of this month we hope to make trips to Otter and Walrus 
Islands, particularly the latter, which is hard to reach but has no foxes, so 
birds are able to nest everywhere out in the open. The murres are supposed to be 
packed like the sooty terns on Johnston (Sand) and there is a colony of glacous- 
winged gulls that should have young big enough to band by then. This species is 
a very desircable one to band. Those that refuge manager Jones has banded at Cold 
Bay have yielded returns from Japan, and several from Siberia. There are also a 
few pairs of the larger, paler glaucous gulls nesting on Walrus. 
A son and daughter of old Bob Peeve (founder of Reeve Aleutian Airlines) were 
here with last tourist flight. Dick Peeve (copilot) came on a binding trip with 
us to the colonies of sea birds at SW Point, Janice Peeve (stewardess) brightened 
our conversation as we skinned birds down In the laboratory. 
The herd of ferel reindeer on this Island (about 450 head now) keep the 
lichens and mosses grazed down to a minimum, but grass and herbaceous vegetation, 
perhaps because of them, flourish. Some whole areas are colored with the blooms 
of lupine, Pedi cularis , or arctic poppy. Beachgrass ( Elymus arenarius mollis ) or 
a sedge ( Carex sp.J, depending on moisture of area 
you 
are 
usually dominant however 
You l ve got to watch these seals! If you 1 re out on the killing fields and get 
to thinking about something else, like blrdw, and suddenly there ! s an l! UH—UH—UII—UH T | 
right behind you and those inch-long canines aren't very many bull-seal lunges 
behind that hot, stinky breath you feel & smell. Speaking of the teeth, they’re 
very pretty in a minor Ivory sort of way and available for the digging out of the 
broken skulls places where carcasses were thrown in bygone years before processing 
for mink-food. Several dead sea lions and one dead killer whale on the beach, 
but please don’t ask us for fresh skeletons of either. 
If Palmer’s 2nd vol. on shorebirds comes out we could certainly use a copy. 
We could use the 1st vol. too, but not enough to have one bought. 
The tide’s going down and we have things to do. 
tv. 
