BIRDS OF THE SEA 459 



sums amounting to several hundreds of pounds are 

 readily paid for a single specimen.^ 



The Little Auk — a link between the Guillemots 

 and the true Auks — is an Arctic breeding species 

 which commonly visits the English coasts in the 

 winter. In common with the Petrels it has a wide 

 oceanic range, and rarely seeks the land except in 

 the nesting season, or when driven thither by stress 

 of weather. Somewhat curiously for so true a bird 

 of the sea, it appears to suffer from the violence 

 of storms to an extent unknown to its congeners. 

 Frequently during heavy gales, numbers of Little 

 Auks are driven ashore and are found exhausted 

 on the beach ; and one constantly hears of examples 

 occurring far inland, even in such unlikely situa- 

 tions as the centre of a midland town. 



The Little Auk lays its single egg of greenish- 

 white, faintly spotted with red, in crevices beneath 

 boulders or in rifts in the higher rocks. Although 

 the bird sometimes occurs in North Britain in 

 summer, no instance is recorded of the eggs having 

 been found in the British Islands. 



Certain birds of the sea there are which, as spring 

 draw'S near, desert the salt water and the cliff's and 

 often travel far inland in search of a nesting haunt. 

 Of these the Black-headed Gulls are the most note- 

 W'Orthy. Their habit is to select some marshy 

 expanse to which they return year after year, form- 

 ing vast colonies. On every tussock and mass of 

 reeds the nests are placed in close proximity, and 



1 The market appears to fluctuate, however, and of late the 

 prices realised have fallen off. 



