128 SEA-BIRDS 



shows that these phenomena of irruption and abundance in lands 

 beyond the normal winter range are linked with cyclones and gales, 

 especially, but not necessarily, those which last for some weeks ; some- 

 times a large population has been caught by a sudden gale when 

 plankton-fishing rather near a lee shore, and elements have been 

 driven ashore or inland before they could find the sea-room necessary 

 to escape to one flank or the other. One thing seems certain about the 

 little auk irruptions: they are quite irregular, and do not reflect any 

 changes in population, as far as can be seen. There is no sign of any 

 periodic cycle of abundance in the numbers of any North Atlantic 

 sea-bird, except perhaps skuas. 



A dovekie wreck on the U.S. seaboard is not necessarily associated 

 with a little auk wreck in Britain, though when weather conditions 

 are extraordinary right across the Atlantic they may coincide. When 

 wrecks occur the light, small-winged little birds turn up in all sorts of 

 places: on reservoirs, lakes, ponds, duck-ponds, rivers, sewage-farms, 

 flooded gutters; in greenhouses, down chimneys, in porches, back 

 yards, pigsties, gardens, roads, turnip-fields; and are caught by 

 foxes, cats, dogs, opossums, raccoons, gulls, ravens, crows, and boys. 

 During the 1911-12 wreck of the little auk a doctor in Finsbury met 

 one entering his surgery door; it snapped at anyone who tried to 

 handle it. The ornithological machine has been sensitive enough to 

 detect all important flights and crashes in Britain only since about 1841, 

 though it is known that there were flights and great abundance in 

 Orkney in 1802-03 or 1803-04 (the records state 'winter of 1803,' which 

 is a common kind of ambiguity which has frustrated many a bird 

 historian) and 181 1- 12. Since 1841 we list the British, and some of 

 the eastern U.S. flights and wrecks as follows: 



Little auk flights and wrecks, Britain and U.S. {italics) 1841-jg^o 

 (Years omitted are those in which nothing special was reported.) 



•Winter' of 



1841-42* Big influx, flights and wrecks in October and November, east and south 



England, east Ireland. 

 1845-46 Local wreck in the Moray area of Scotland. 



1846-47 Unusually abundant Orkney, and minor flight Aberdeenshire. 



1848-49* Great influx, flights and wrecks in December, Norfolk and Suffolk. 

 1860-61 Some inland New England. 



1861-62* Great influx, flights and wrecks in November, east England; many 



north Scotland January, after gale. 

 1863-64 Large flights, autumn, Durham and Yorkshire. 



