THl'; MlllJ-, AUK. 599 



great flocks, within llic arctic circle The iiihospitablo coasts of Greenland and Spitz- 

 borgcn arc the dwelling-places of these birds, and thousands ha\je been seen at Mchille 

 Island. In these dreary regions they are said to watch the motions of the ice, and, wlicu 

 .it is broken by storms, down they come in legions, crowding into every fissure, to ban- 

 quet on the Crustacea and other marine animals which then lie at their mercy. 



Captain Sabine, in his " Memoir on the Birds of Greenland," says, in reference to 

 one of his voyages of discovery : 



" This species was abundant in Baffin's Bay and Davis' Straits ; and in latitude 76^' was 

 so numerous in tlio channels of water separating the fields of ice, that many hundreds 

 were killed daily, and the ship's company supplied with them. The whole of the birds 

 in the breeding season, the sexes being alike, had the under part of the neck an uniform 

 sooty black, terminating abruptly and in an e^'cn line against the white of the bcllj' : 

 the 3'oung birds, which we saw in all stages from the egg, as soon as they were feathered, 

 were marked exactly as the mature birds ; but in the third week of September, when we 

 were on our passage down the American coast, every specimen, whether old or yoinig, 

 was observed to be in change; and in. the course of a few days the entire feathers 

 of the throat and cheeks, and of the under. part of the neck, had become white." 



The Little Auk can hardly be called an occasional visitant of Britain, for those which 

 have appeared here have been evidentjy exhausted birds, buH'eted by storms, and driven 

 by contrary winds far from tlie spot coiigcnial to their habits. 



This bird laj's only one og;g, of a pale blueisli green, on the most inaccessible ledges of 

 the precipices which overhang the ocean. 



