PYGOPODES. ( 305 ) ALCID^E. 



THE LITTLE AUK. 



COMMON ROTCHE, LITTLE ROTCHE, LITTLE GUILLEMOT, 

 SEA DOVE. 



Meryulus alle. 



The time and sessoun bitter, cauld and pale 

 Thay schort dayis, that clerkis clepe Brumale : 

 Quhen brym blastis of the northyn art 

 Ouerquhelmyt had Neptiinus in his cart, 

 And all to schaik the levis of the treis, 

 The rageand stormes ouerwelterand wally seis. 

 Ryveris ran rede on spate with wattir broun, 

 And burnis harlis all thare bankis doun. 



GAWIN DOUGLAS, Description of Winter, 1512. 



AFTER severe storms this winter visitor to our coasts is 

 occasionally found far inland in a wasted condition, being 

 driven there by the violence of the wind. Writing under 

 date the 27th of January 1860, Mr. Hardy mentions in his 

 MS. Notes that one of the Penmanshiel foresters had brought 

 to him a Little Auk which he had found on the railway, 

 wounded below the wing. Probably it had struck against 

 a telegraph wire in its flight. Mr. Kelly relates that a 

 specimen was caught at Harryburn House, near Lauder, 1 

 which is about twenty-five miles from the sea ; and Mr. 

 Wood, lately farmer at Foulden Bastle, informs me that on 

 the 29th of December 1876 he shot a specimen of this bird 

 which flew out of a plantation on Foulden Estate, near 

 " The Camps," the weather having been very stormy for a 

 week or two before that time. Mr. Hardy records that an 



i Hist. Ser. Nat. Club, vol. vii. p. 306. 

 VOL. II. U 



