Steller noted on 6 September off Bird Island in the Shumagin Islands, that "when we were out to sea about half a mile we were especially astonished at the untold numbers of seabirds which we saw on the northern side of the island." These birds were listed as cormorants, auks, horned puffins, fulmars _(Fulmarus glacialis)_, pigeon guillemots, black oystercatchers _(Haematopus backmani)_, and a pied diver which Stejneger assumed was an ancient murrelet _(Synthliboramphus antiquus)_.
On 15 September when Bering's vessel, the _St. Peter_, was south of Amukta Pass, Steller recorded observing "river gulls." The observation is not as interesting as Stejneger's comment (Golder 1925) concerning it. Stejneger stated that no true river gulls lived in the Aleutians and these must, therefore, have been another small gull with red feet. He thought they must have been the red-legged kittiwake _(Rissa brevirostris)_, which "inhabits the Aleutian Islands from Bering Island to Sannak."
Thirty-seven years after Bering's voyage, Captain James Cook sailed into the Gulf of Alaska, arriving off Kayak Island on 11 May 1778. Cook was not accompanied by an able naturalist. His surgeon, William Anderson, did have some experience gained on earlier voyages in preparing skins and taking notes, but he had contracted tuberculosis and became so ill that even his notes ceased after 8 June, while the expedition was in Cook Inlet.
Cook was under orders to keep a careful record of everything he saw. One of the results was that he had birds collected even though he had no naturalist to do the work. Several birds were collected in Prince William Sound while Cook's vessels were at anchor in Port Etches. These included two marbled murrelets (_Brachyramphus marmoratus_--type specimens), a black oystercatcher, a surfbird _(Aphriza virgata)_, a surf scoter _(Melanitta perspicillata)_, and a red-breasted merganser (_Mergus serrator_--type specimen), along with several forest birds (Stresemann 1949).
The watch journals of Cook and his officers provide some additional information. Captain Charles Clerke (Beaglehole 1974) remarked in his log on the passage out of Prince William Sound through Montague Strait on 20 May that "it had almost become tautology to mention whales and seals and innumerable sea fowl that so confoundingly kept their distance."