118 THE CONDOR Vol. XVI During my recent expedition, I spent the time between the first and mid- dle of May cruising in Chatham Strait, Icy Strait and Glacier Bay. Among other specimens, we collected quite a few Marbled Murrelets and also several Kittlitz Murrelets. It was the height of the breeding season of these two spe- cies, for we found in every specimen fully or partly formed eggs, most of which, however, were broken in the collecting. However, I preserved, of the Kittlitz Murrelet, one fully formed and colored egg, besides several broken ones. I had no previous data or reference with me other than "North American Birds' Eggs", by Chester A. l?eed, and this gives on page ?.6 the data of Capt. Tilson: "Kittlitz Murrelet--a pure white egg found in a hollow under a bunch of rank matted grass on Sanak Island, June 25, 1899." I am sending you the broken egg, the whole egg, and both parent birds from whose oviducts they were taken, so you may properly describe and meas- ure them for yourself. I have long doubted the authenticity of the Tilson data, and it seems strange to me that the Kittlitz Murrelet, which so closely resembles the Marbled, should lay such widely different eggs. On June 5, while lying at anchor off Pavloff Bay, Alaska Peninsula, a trapper and miner came aboard, who saw me preparing skins of the Kitt]itz and Marbled murrelets. He recognized the Kittlitz immediately, and said it was strange that a water bird should lay its egg far inland, high on the moun- tain sides, in the snow. Upon closer questioning he said he meant that the egg was laid, not on the snow, but far above timber line on the mountain, in bare spots, amid the snow. In the sixteen years he had been there he had found but ?.?wo eggs, but he remembered well the eggs and bird. I had him describe the egg carefully before I showed him the one ?[ possessed, and it tallied with his description. On June 6, I was hunting brown bear for the Carnegie Museum, in com- pany with this man, and while crossing a high divide, a Kittlitz Murrelet flew past us. "There is your bird", called the trapper immediately; "it has a nest here somewhere". On June 10, I saw with my glasses a she-bear and two cubs far up in the snow of Mount Pavloff. To reach them, I had to climb several miles inside the snow line, with only here and there a ?ew bare spots to give me a much desired walking ground, when close to my feet rose a Kittlitz Mur- relet. There on the bare lava, without even the pretension of a hollow, lay a single egg. Eight years ago, when I shot my first Kittlitz Murrelet in the ice pack of Bering Sea, an Eskimo looking at the bird said, "Him lay egg way up in snow on mountain". I ridiculed the idea then, of this bird laying its egg in the snowy far from the sea on the mountain-side, but, keeping a constant look- out, expected to find its breeding place on the rocky islands of Alaska or' Siberia, perhaps in company with the auks and murres. Now, however, found the Eskimo's words corroborated, and the Murrelet's solitary egg laid in just such a strange place as he described. I enclose a photograph marking the spot where I found it, and this egg also. Lancaster, Massachusetts, February
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