“Bobrovia,” or Otter Island six miles south of St. Paul Island.
[The North Store and landing, viewed from St. Paul.]
The observer will notice that six miles southward and westward of the reef of St. Paul Island is a bluffy islet, called by the Russians Bobrovia, because in olden time the promishlyniks are said to have captured many thousands of sea-otters on its rocky coast. It rises from the ocean, sheer and bold, an unbroken mural precipice extending nearly all around, of sea-front, but dropping on its northern margin, at the water, low, and slightly elevated above the surf-wash, with a broken, rocky beach and no sand. The height of the bluffs at their greatest elevation over the west end is three hundred feet, while the eastern extremity is quite low, and terminated by a queer, funnel-shaped crater-hill, which is as distinctly defined, and as plainly scorched and devoid of the slightest sign of vegetation within as though it had burned up and out yesterday. That crater-point on Otter Island is the only unique feature of the place, for with the exception of this low north shore, before mentioned, where a few thousand of “bachelor seals” haul out during the season every year, there is nothing else worthy of notice concerning it. A bad reef makes out to the westward, which I have indicated from my observation of the rocks awash, looking down upon them from the bluffs. Great numbers of water-fowl roost upon the cliffs, and there are here about as many blue foxes to the acre as the law of life allows. A small, shallow pool of impure water lies close down to the north shore, right under a low hill upon which the Russians in olden times posted a huge Greek cross, that is still standing; indeed it was the habit of those early days of occupation in Alaska to erect such monuments everywhere on conspicuous elevations adjacent to the posts or settlements. One of these is still standing at Northeast Point, on the large sand-dune there which overlooks the killing-grounds, and another sound stalwart cross yet faces the gales and driving “boorgas” on the summit of Bogaslov Mountain, as it has withstood them during the last sixty years.
To the eastward, six miles from Northeast Point, will be noticed a small rock named Walrus Island. It is a mere ledge of lava, flat-capped, lifted just above the wash of angry waves; indeed, in storms of great power, the observer, standing on either Cross or Hutchinson’s Hills, with a field-glass, can see the water breaking clear over it: these storms, however, occur late in the season, usually in October or November. This island has little or no commercial importance, being scarcely more than a quarter of a mile in length and one hundred yards in point of greatest width, with bold water all around, entirely free from reefs or sunken rocks. As might be expected, there is no fresh water on it. In a fog it makes an ugly neighbor for the sea-captains when they are searching for St. Paul; they all know it, and they all dread it. It is not resorted to by the fur-seals or by sea-lions in particular; but, singularly enough, it is frequented by several hundred male walrus, to the exclusion of females, every summer. A few sea-lions, but only a very few, however, breed here. On account of the rough weather, fogs, etc., this little islet is seldom visited by the natives of St. Paul, and then only in the egging season of late June and early July when that surf-beaten breakwater literally swarms with breeding sea-fowl.
This low, tiny, island is, perhaps, the most interesting single spot now known to the naturalist who may land in northern seas, to study the habits of bird-life; for here, without exertion or risk, he can observe and walk among tens upon tens of thousands of screaming water-fowl; and, as he sits down upon the polished lava rock, he becomes literally ignored and environed by these feathered friends, as they reassume their varied positions of incubation, from which he disturbs them by his arrival. Generation after generation of their kind have resorted to this rock unmolested, and to-day, when you get among them, all doubt and distrust seem to have been eliminated from their natures. The island itself is rather unusual in those formations which we find peculiar to Alaskan waters. It is almost flat, with slight, irregular undulations on top, spreading over an area of five acres perhaps. It rises abruptly, though low, from the sea, and it has no safe beach upon which a person can land from a boat; not a stick of timber or twig of shrubbery ever grew upon it, though the scant presence of low, crawling grasses in the central portions prevents the statement that all vegetation is absent. Were it not for the frequent rains and dissolving fog characteristic of summer weather here, the accumulation of guano would be something wonderful to contemplate—Peru would have a rival. As it is, however, the birds, when they return, year after year, find their nesting-floor swept as clean as though they had never sojourned there before. The scene of confusion and uproar that presented itself to my astonished senses when I approached this place in search of eggs, one threatening, foggy July morning, may be better imagined than described, for, as the clumsy bidarrah came under the lee of the low cliffs, swarm upon swarm of thousands of murres or “arries” dropped in fright from their nesting-shelves, and, before they had control of their flight, they struck to the right and left of me, like so many cannon-balls. I was forced, in self-protection, to instantly crouch for a few moments under the gunwale of the boat until the struggling, startled flock passed, like an irresistible, surging wave, over my head. Words cannot depict the amazement and curiosity with which I gazed around after climbing up to the rocky plateau, and stood among myriads of breeding-birds; they fairly covered the entire surface of the island with their shrinking forms, while others whirled in rapid flight over my head, as wheels within wheels, so thickly inter-running that the blue and gray of the sky was hidden from my view. Add to this impression the stunning whir of hundreds of thousands of strong, beating wings, the shrill screams of the gulls, and a muffled croaking of the “arries,” coupled with an indescribable, disagreeable smell which arose from broken eggs and other decaying substances—then a faint idea may be evoked of the strange reality spread before me. Were it not for this island and the ease with which the natives can gather, in a few hours, tons upon tons of sea-fowl eggs, the people of St. Paul would be obliged to go the westward, and suspend themselves from the lofty cliffs of Einahnuhto, dangling over the sea by ropes, as their less favored neighbors are only too glad and willing to do at St. George.
I am much divided in my admiration of the two great bird-rookeries of this Pribylov group, the one on the face of the high bluffs at St. George, and the other on the table-top of Walrus Islet; but perhaps the latter place gives, within the smallest area, the greatest variety of nesting and breeding birds, for here the “arrie” and many gulls, cormorants, sea-parrots, and auks come to lay their eggs in countless numbers. The face and brow of the low, cliff-like sea-front to this island are occupied almost exclusively by the “arries,” Lomvia arra, which lay a single egg each on the surface of the bare rock, and stand, just like so many champagne bottles, straddling over them while hatching, only leaving at irregular intervals to feed, and then not until their mates relieve them. Hundreds of thousands of these birds alone are thus engaged about the 29th of every June on this little rocky island, roosting stacked up together as tight as so many sardines in a box, as compactly as they can be stowed, each and all of them uttering an incessant, muffled, hoarse, grunting noise. How fiercely they quarrel among themselves—everlastingly! and in this way thousands of eggs are rolled off into the sea, or into crevices, or into fissures, where they are lost and broken.
The “arrie” lays but one egg. If it is removed or broken, she will soon lay another; but if undisturbed after depositing the first, she undertakes its hatching at once. The size, shape, and coloration of this egg, among the thousands which came under my observation, are exceedingly variable. A large proportion of the eggs become so dirty by rolling here and there in the guano while the birds tread and fight over them as to be almost unrecognizable. I was struck by a happy adaptation of nature to their rough nesting. It is found in the toughness of this shell of the egg, so tough that the natives, when gathering them, throw them as farmers do apples into their tubs, baskets, etc., on the cliff, and then carry them down to a general heap of collection near the boats’ landing, where they are poured out upon the rocks with a single flip of the hand, just as a sack of potatoes would be emptied; and then again, after this, they are quite as carelessly handled when loaded into the “bidarrah,” sustaining through it all a very trifling loss from crushed or broken specimens.[98]
These “arries” seem to occupy a ribbon strip in width: it is drawn around the outward edges of the flat table-top to Walrus Island as a regular belt, reserved all to themselves: while the small grassy interior from which they are thus self-excluded is the only place, I believe, in Bering Sea where the big white gull, Larus glaucus, breeds. Here I found among grassy tussocks the white burgomaster building a nest of dry grass, sea-ferns, Sertularidæ, etc., very nicely laid up and rounded, and in which it laid usually three eggs, sometimes only a couple; occasionally I would look into a nest with four. These heavy gulls could not breed on either of the other islands in this manner, for the glaucous gull is too large to settle on the narrow shelf-ledges of the cliffs, as the smaller gulls do, and lesser water-fowls, and those places which could receive it would also be a happy hunting-ground and footing to the foxes.
The red-legged kittiwake, Rissa brevirostris, and its cousin, Rissa tridactyla, build in the most amicable manner together on the faces of those cliffs, for they are little gulls, and they associate with cormorants, sea-parrots, and tiny auks, all together, and, with the exception of the last, their nests are very easy of access. All birds, especially the “arries,” have an exceedingly happy time of it on this Walrus Islet—nothing to disturb them, in my opinion, free from the ravenous maw of blue foxes over on St. Paul, and from the piratical and death-dealing sweep of owls and hawks, which infest the Aleutian chain and the mainland.
The position of the islands is such as to be somewhat outside of that migratory path pursued by the birds on the mainland, and owing to this reason they are only visited by a few stragglers from that quarter, a few from the Asiatic side, and by the millions of their own home-bred and indigenous stock. One of these migratory species, a turnstone, however, comes here every summer, for three or four weeks’ stay, in great numbers, and actually gets so fat in feeding upon the larvæ which abound in the decaying carcasses over the killing-grounds that it usually bursts open when it falls, shot on the wing. A heavy easterly gale once brought a strange bird to the islands from the mainland—a grebe, P. griseigena. It was stranded on St. George in 1873, whereupon the natives declared the like of which they had never seen before; again, I found a robin one cool morning in October, the 15th: the natives told me that it was an accident—brought over by some storm or gale of wind that took it up and off from its path across the tundra of Bristol Bay. The next fair wind sweeping from the north or the west could be so improved by this robin, M. migratoria, that it would spread its wings and as abruptly return. Thus hawks, owls, and a number of strange water-fowls visit the islands, but never remain there long.