PRELIMINARY CLASSIFIED NOTES 9 



with a tinge of bluish green, blotched and spotted with ashy grey and very dark 

 blackish brown, which sometimes tends to form a zone. (PI. F.) Average size 

 of 52 eggs, 2*32 x 1'56 in. [58*9 x 39*8 mm.]. The breeding season is late, and in 

 Scotland eggs are rarely laid before the end of May, and in Iceland from the begin- 

 ning of June onwards. Incubation is carried on by both sexes in turn, and Hantzsch 

 found the males sitting at night and the females by day in several cases. The 

 incubation period is estimated by the same writer at three and a half weeks 24-25 

 days. One brood is reared during the season, but a second clutch of eggs is laid 

 if the first is destroyed. [F. c. B. J.] 



5. Food. Chiefly Crustacea and small fish. Also marine worms, molluscs 

 (Naumann, Vogel Mitteleuropas, xii. 239), and seaweed (E. Selous, Bird Watcher in 

 the Shetlands, p. 203). The young are fed by both parents on small fish. 

 [F. B. K.] 



LITTLE!- A UK [Alle alle (Linnaeus); Mergulus alle (Linnaeus). Rotge, 

 rotchie ; Iceland auk (Yorkshire) ; dovekie. French, mergule nain ; German, 

 Krabbentaucher ; Italian, gazza marina minore], 



1. Description. The small size of this species and the short beak alone 

 suffice to distinguish it from its congeners. (PI. 96.) Length 7 '5 in. [179 mm.]. 

 The sexes are alike, and there is a distinct summer and winter dress. In the 

 summer dress the head and neck to the fore-breast and the upper parts, are black, 

 the back and wings have a greenish gloss, and are further relieved by white edgings 

 to the hinder scapulars, and white tips to the secondaries. There is also a white 

 spot over the eye. The uppermost flank-feathers have their upper margin slate 

 coloured. The rest of the plumage is pure white. Iris hazel, legs and toes livid 

 brown, the webs darker. In winter the throat and fore-neck are white, like the 

 rest of the under parts. The juvenile plumage resembles that of the adult in 

 summer, and this appears to be a mesoptyle dress, as in the guillemot and 

 razorbill. The down (protoptyle) plumage is of a uniform sooty brownish black. 

 Immature birds after the autumn moult are to be distinguished from adults in 

 winter by the absence of the white spot over the eye. [w. P. P.] 



2. Distribution. To the British Isles this species is only a winter visitor ; 

 its breeding haunts lie in the high north, and include Grimsey, off the Iceland 

 coast, and possibly also on the mainland (cf. Ibis, 1911, p. 8), Spitzbergen, the 

 west side of Novaya Zemlya, Franz-Josef Land, Jan Mayen, Mevenklint, and in 



VOL. III. B 



