228 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
dive, that I have shot at them at a distance of twenty 
yards more than once, and before the shot touched the 
water they had vanished. 
Far away from its usual haunts on the ocean, a solitary 
specimen of the Black-throated Diver (Colymbus are- 
ticus) was taken in the neighbourhood in January, 1848. 
It had alighted on the ice which covered a large piece 
of water, on which some snow had fallen and had partly 
thawed, but freezing again quickly in the evening, the 
poor bird was unwittingly detained a prisoner, and was 
found in the morning frozen to the ice and much 
exhausted. It was killed with a stick by the man who 
found it, and proved to be a female in good plumage. 
In the winter of 1855 another dweller on the deep 
paid us a visit. ‘This was the Common Guillemot (Uria 
troile), several of which frequented Thoresby Lake for a 
week or two in December of that year. They occupied 
themselves busily with fishing while they remained, and 
then suddenly took their departure. 
The eggs of the common guillemot vary much in 
colour and markings, the most common ground colour 
being green, or dirty white, with streaks, spots, or 
blotches of dark reddish brown, or in some cases nearly 
black. I obtained one at Flamborough Head of a per- 
fectly pure white, and I have one in my collection with 
the ground of a uniform warm buff, blotched as usual 
with brown. 
During the severe frost of January, 1847, a specimen 
of the Little Auk (Uria alle) came into my hands. It 
was seen by a labouring man ina ditch on the banks of 
the Trent at Holme Pierrepoint, and as he thought it a 
“very strange sort of thing,” as he afterwards described 
oe ee 
