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568 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
This species is pretty abundant on our coasts; and it is 
said to breed on rocky islands, from Mount Desert eastward. 
It can therefore be considered as a resident of north-eastern 
New England through the year. It is found all along 
our shores in the winter, but not in any great abundance; 
and it is less common on the shores of Massachusetts, than 
on those of Maine. Like the other Auks and Guillemots, 
it is an expert diver; and it obtains its food by diving and 
swimming beneath the surface of the water: this food, as 
with the others, consists principally of fish, which it seizes 
in its bill, and swallows whole. It also eats various small 
marine animals and their eggs ; and, like the others, picks 
up such floating garbage as may come in its way. 
The eggs, three in number, are placed on the bare rock ~ 
or earth, usually in fissures of cliffs or almost inaccessible 
ledges. These are exactly ovoidal in form, and vary in 
color from a pale greenish-white to a pure pearl-white. 
This is covered irregularly with spots and blotches of dif- 
ferent shades of brown and black, thickest at the great end, 
where they are usually almost confluent into a ring around 
the whole egg. Besides these spots, there are others of an 
obscure-purple scattered over the egg, that appear as if they 
were beneath the outside of the shell. The dimensions of 
the eggs of this species vary from 2.40 by 1.60 inch to 2.25 
by 1.50 inch. 
URIA LOMVIA. — Briinnich. 
The Foolish Guillemot; the Murre, 
Uria lomvia, Briinnich. Orn. Bor. (1764), 27. 
Colymbus troile, Linneus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 220. 
DESCRIPTION. 
Bill rather long, pointed, compressed; from the lateral feathers longer than the 
tarsus, or than the inner toe and claw; a narrow line under and behind the eye 
dark-brown; head above, and entire other upper parts, brownish-black; sides of the 
head, and entire under parts, white; sides of the body under the wing with trans- 
verse stripes of ashy-brown; under wing coverts white, secondary quills tipped with 
white; bill blackish-brown, paler at base; tarsi and feet dark greenish-brown; sum- 
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