BRUNNICH'S MURRE 195 



bird. When launching into the air off a cliff or when rising from 

 the ground or water, in which it experiences considerable difficulty 

 in calm weather, the body plumage is very much flattened, producing 

 an aeroplane effect; it does the same thing when about to alight, 

 checking its motion by spreading its body against the air with widely 

 extended feet and rapidly "back peddling" with its wings. It is a 

 good swimmer and an expert diver. When swimming below the sur- 

 face it uses its wings to good advantage and makes rapid progress. 

 Mr. Turner says of its vocal performances: 



The note of this species is at times peculiarly hoarse and guttural and at 

 other times it makes a note impossible to imitate when it thrusts its beak into 

 the water. Another sound uttered is exactly like the bleating of a sheep and 

 also scarcely distinguishable from one of the sounds made by the fur seal 

 Callorhinus ursinus. 



It is usually a silent bird, but has a soft purring note suggested by 

 its name; I have also heard it utter a loud croaking note when on 

 the wing. 



Winter. Although the Briinnich's murre often spends the winter 

 as far north as it can find open water there is a general southward 

 movement of the species. It frequently remains all winter in Hud- 

 son Bay during favorable seasons; it winters regularly in the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence and on the coast of Maine from November to March; 

 it occurs more or less regularly off the coast of Massachusetts in 

 winter and as a straggler to Long Island, and even to North and 

 South Carolina. The erratic wanderings of this species in winter 

 have furnished material for a large number of interesting records, 

 along the Atlantic coast and, strangely enough, well into the interior, 

 chiefly in the vicinity of the Great Lakes, as far west as Michigan 

 and Indiana. Rather than attempt to give these records or even 

 outline the unusual migration, I would refer the reader to an ex- 

 cellent paper on the subject read by Mr. J. H. Fleming, of Toronto, 

 at the International Ornithological Congress in 1905. The conclusion 

 to be drawn from a study of these wanderings, for a period of 15 

 years from 1890 to 1905, over a wide inland area far remote from the 

 normal haunts of this maritime species, is that its winter feeding 

 grounds in the southern portions of Hudson Bay became so thor- 

 oughly blocked with drift ice, and frozen over, that the birds were 

 forced to migrate in search of food and many of them perished in a 

 fruitless effort to find it. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Breeding range. Coasts and islands of the North Atlantic and 

 Arctic Oceans. From the Gulf of St. Lawrence (Bird Rock), New- 

 foundland and Labrador northward to northern Greenland (Bow- 

 doin Bay, Smith Sound, Cape Sabine to 81 and 82), North Devon, 



