. The Eastern Bering Sea Shelf : oceanography and resources / edited by Donald W. Hood and John A. Calder. Oceanography Bering Pelagic distrihulion 703 Red-legged Kittiwake (Rissa breuirostris) Red-legged Kittiwakes are endemic to the Bering Sea, and the major portion of the population nests on the high cliffs of St. George Island. Smaller popula- tions nest on Bogoslof and Buldir islands, and pos- sibly in the Komandorskys. Sowls et al. (1978) esti- mated a total Red-legged Kittiwake population of about 250,000. This species is, if anything, even more pelagically oriented than the Black
. The Eastern Bering Sea Shelf : oceanography and resources / edited by Donald W. Hood and John A. Calder. Oceanography Bering Pelagic distrihulion 703 Red-legged Kittiwake (Rissa breuirostris) Red-legged Kittiwakes are endemic to the Bering Sea, and the major portion of the population nests on the high cliffs of St. George Island. Smaller popula- tions nest on Bogoslof and Buldir islands, and pos- sibly in the Komandorskys. Sowls et al. (1978) esti- mated a total Red-legged Kittiwake population of about 250,000. This species is, if anything, even more pelagically oriented than the Black-legged Kitti- wake. Red-legged Kittiwakes forage on a variety of small fish and large zooplankters which they take from within m of the ocean's surface (Hunt et Chapter 38, this volume). In particular, a large por- tion of their diet consists of myctophid fishes (Hunt et al. 1980), a deepwater group rarely, if ever, found in shelf waters. Shuntov (1963) depicted the summer distribution of Red-legged Kittiwakes as occurring throughout the deeper waters of the Bering Sea with no birds over the shallower waters in the north and east. Highest densities were in and near the shelfbreak area and to the north, east, and south of the Pribilof Islands. Shuntov gave densities of up to three to six birds per km' in this area. He suggested that a major por- tion of the population moves south out of the Bering Sea in the winter. In June-July of 1975, Wahl (1978) found Red-legged Kittiwakes to outnumber Black- legged Kittiwakes over waters deeper than 2,000 m to the northwest and southwest of the Pribilofs. He found no birds between Hokkaido and the Aleutian Islands and none east of about 177°W in the south- east Bering Sea. Bartonek and Gibson (1972) re- corded three birds in Bristol Bay in August. For this species we have relied solely on shipboard censuses. Problems with identification from the air caused observers to record most kittiwakes seen as unidentified, thus resulting
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