NON-INDIGENOUS BRITISH BIRDS. 313 



Family ALCID.^. Genus Mergulus. 



LITTLE AUK. 



Mergulus alle {Li?ificEus). 



(British : Irregular nomadic autumn and winter migrant.) 



Single Brooded. Laying season, June. 



Breeding area : North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean 

 basins. The Little Auk breeds in colonies of varying 

 size in Nova Zembla, Franz-Josef Land. Spitzbergen, 

 Grimsey Island to the north of Iceland, and the east 

 and west coasts of Greenland, from north of about lat. 

 68°, to about lat. 79°. 



Breeding habits: The Little Auk is another species 

 which wanders no further south in winter from its Polar 

 haunts than the necessities of life compel it. It is 

 gregarious and usually breeds in vast colonies, some of 

 them probably containing hundreds of thousands of 

 pairs. It spends the greater part of its life at sea, but 

 in May resorts to the land to breed. There can be little 

 doubt that this Auk pairs for life, and yearly returns 

 to one place to rear its young. Its breeding grounds 

 are not always situated by the sea, but are sometimes 

 at a considerable distance from the coast, and are more 

 sloping rock-covered banks than precipitous cliffs. A 

 favourite site is on the sloping ground below a range of 

 cliffs, where the bank is covered with stones and broken 

 rocks that have from time to time crumbled from the 

 precipices towering above. Dr. Mayes met with a very 

 large colony of this bird on the Greenland coast of 

 Smith Sound, situated on the slopes of both sides of a 

 rocky valley which was crowned with lofty cliffs. In its 

 breeding habits this bird very closely resembles the 

 Puffin. It makes no nest, however, and lays its eggs 



