BLACK GUILLEMOT 



199 



than a very few individuals were seen or taken on the British coasts 

 up to the close of the last century, and it is accordingly not allowed 

 a ciefinite place in the British list. It is true that in some works a 

 considerable number of alleged occurrences of this bird is recorded, but 

 in 1889 an eminent authority declared 

 that, at most, only two of the instances 

 chronicled up to that date could be 

 regarded as free from doubt. Several 

 of these earlier records refer to alleged 

 Irish specimens, but in the most recent 

 work on the birds of Ireland the species 

 is excluded from the list. Between 

 1889 and 1900 four authenticated 

 instances of the occurrence of BrLin- 

 nich's guillemot have, however, been 

 chronicled. Of these, three were 

 obtained in Yorkshire (one in 1894 

 and two in the following year), and the 

 fourth in Cambridgeshire in 1895. The 

 thicker beak and the dark colouring — 

 especially the sharp contrast between 

 the black head and the chocolate neck 

 — are the leading distinctive character- 

 istics of this guillemot, which breeds apparently in high latitudes all 

 round the Pole, and occurs rarely in the north of Iceland. In winter 

 it visits Scandinavia, and, as already mentioned, occasionally straggles 

 to the east coast of England. 



brunnich's guillemot (summer). 



„, , /^ Ml * With the black guillemot, easily distinguished from 

 Black Guillemot , , r, ,• t-i 



/„ . ,, . the other members of the group by its relatively 



shorter beak and the coal-black summer-plumage, 



relieved by a white " blaze " on the wing, we come to an undoubted 



British species, which is, however, mainly confined to the more northern 



districts of our islands. On account of the shorter beak, coupled with 



the greater difference of the summer from the winter plumage, and the 



fact that the female lays a pair of eggs in place of the usual one, this 



guillemot is sometimes made the type of a genus, under the name of 



Ceplius grylle^ but we may be content to follow in this respect the 



practice of most of the older British ornithologists. The species is a 



native of the North Atlantic, breeding on both the eastern and 



western coasts of Scandinavia as well as those of the White Sea, and also 



