The parakeet auklet may not be abundant anywhere in the Gulf of Alaska but, based on the numbers of places it has been seen in recent years, its population appears to be well dispersed and probably doing very well. This auklet is most abundant from the Shumagin Islands westward. It is almost certainly more numerous than has been thought. Its habits are secretive enough so that it could easily escape notice.
Because the parakeet auklet nests predominantly under boulders, it probably was not much affected by fox. Rats would certainly have reduced its numbers wherever these were introduced into its breeding habitat. We have no data to tell us whether there may have been population fluctuations in the past, but there undoubtedly were at least minor ones locally after rats were introduced.
Crested Auklet (Aethia pygmaea)
Udvardy (1963) shows the breeding range of the crested auklet as extending from southern Kodiak Island westward. Within the northern and western Gulf of Alaska, it is certainly most abundant in the eastern Shumagin Islands.
Isleib saw this auklet in Prince William Sound 3 times during the winter of 1972-73. These are the only records he was aware of for that area (Isleib and Kessel 1973). David Roseneau (Isleib and Kessel 1973) saw several in Amatuli Cove, Barren Islands, in June 1965. I observed one in the vicinity of Cape Spencer in August 1973.
Friedmann (1935) listed the crested auklet as a breeding bird at Kodiak, but considered it to be much more abundant as a wintering bird. Townsend (1913) has provided us with a vivid description of the myriads of crested auklets he encountered at Yukon Harbor, Little Koniuji Island. Gabrielson and Lincoln (1959) noted large numbers of crested auklet around Simeonof and Bird islands in the Shumagin Islands in 1946 and stated that the Yukon Harbor colony was still thriving.
Crested auklets were not encountered on the 1973 FWS reconnaissance survey until we reached the Shumagin Islands. They were abundant only at the southeastern end of Little Koniuji, where we encountered perhaps 10,000 in Yukon Harbor and more than 50,000 in a small cove directly south of Yukon Harbor on the opposite side of the island. As numerous as they were, they did not match Townsend's myriads or even come close to his assessment that they "were here more numerous than the 'choochkies' at St. George." St. George Island in the Pribilofs is famous for its least auklets which, in the past, have been estimated to number as high as 36 million (Peterson and Fisher 1955). The numbers there today do not even approach this level and we have no way of knowing how abundant they were when Townsend visited the Pribilofs, but I think it is safe to say that they probably numbered in the millions. There are probably more crested auklets than we observed on Little Koniuji, but there is certainly no longer anything approaching millions of birds. Properly pronounced, Koniuji is the Aleut name for the crested auklet, so we can assume that the original inhabitants were impressed by its numbers.
During the 1973 FWS survey we did not see crested auklets at either Simeonof or Bird islands. On the overgrazed and cattle-trampled Simeonof it does not seem possible that any could still exist.
I suspect that a cattleman's greed has been the undoing of any crested auklets that may have nested on Simeonof Island. This would not account for the loss of any colonies that may have been on Bird Island, but the decaying fox-trapper's cabin on that island undoubtedly tells the story. Churnabura, with its feral cattle, presents much the same problem as Simeonof. As for Little Koniuji, have horned puffins been partly responsible for the decrease in crested auklets? The puffin colony at the south end of Little Koniuji must be exactly where Townsend's millions of crested auklets once nested.