JBirds of Spitsbergen, 597 



4-25. Uria BiiUENNicHi, E. Sabiae. Briinnich's Guillemot. 



The loomeries of Spitsbergen have been the subject of so 

 much writing that I can add little with advantage. The most 

 interesting loomery, though one of the smallest I saw, 

 was at Hypcrit Hat_, on the eastern shore of Ice Fjord. The 

 site when T visited it on July 7th was shared by a few pairs 

 of Mandt's Guillemots, Little Auks, and a single pair of 

 Glaucous Gulls. The Briinnich^s Guillemots were so situated 

 that by mounting an adjacent bank I could look on to their 

 ledges from a few yards'* distance ; and I wish to say deli- 

 berately that Briinnich's Guillemot does not invariably sit 

 upon its eggs in the upright attitude of the pictures, but often 

 at such an angle, leaning forward over the egg, that its weight 

 must be heavily thrown on to the egg itself. The position of 

 the incubation-mark on a nesting Guillemot, though so low 

 down, does not negative the possibility of this. Each bird as 

 it returns from the sea is received with clamour by its own 

 section, so to say, of the colony, and is not allowed to settle 

 (for quarters are limited) except under protest. A bird is 

 indeed often baffled more than once, and has to fly round and 

 try again; and I repeatedly saw cases where a Guillemot which 

 was leaning low over its egg rose to an erect posture to repel 

 an intruder (and in this position its egg became barely visible), 

 and after an interval settled down again. 



While the ice remained about the lower entries of Ice Fjord 

 great numbers of Briinnich's Guillemots were there, and their 

 movements are rhythmical. While the tide was making or 

 at flood they kept out among the ice. Then I have often 

 approached them so closely in a whale-boat that as they dived 

 they could be followed by the eye for many feet in the clear 

 water. They dive very deeply and far, often going almost 

 perpendicularly down by the side of a floe, which would be 

 some ten feet or so in thickness and perhaps six or seven 

 yards across, and reappearing on exactly the opposite side. 

 As tlie tide ran out they would leave the open sea and fly up 

 in close flights to the heads of the bays, where they caught 

 the little Ai'ctic cod {Boreagadus fabricii, the "Is murt" of 

 the Norwegians). With a single exception (taken out of a 



