THE LITTLE-AUK 41 



completely exhausted, and were picked up either dead or in a dying 

 condition, after their long struggle against wind and waves. Near 

 Redcar alone two hundred and fifty are known to have been found, 1 

 and two hundred and eighty-five from Norfolk, 2 but this can only 

 represent a small proportion of those which perished. One pecu- 

 liarity about this invasion is obvious from a consideration of the 

 Scottish records, namely, that though very few birds occurred on the 

 west side of Scotland north of Oban, a considerable number evidently 

 found their way down the Great Glen, no fewer than twenty-six 

 having been picked up in the environs of Oban itself. The irruption 

 of February and March 1900 was also on a large scale, but was chiefly 

 noticed along the Norfolk coast from the Wash to Lowestoft. Here 

 the numbers probably exceeded those of 1895, but the invasion was 

 confined to a smaller area. Of these three or four more important 

 irruptions, it is probable that that of 1841 was the most extensive, 

 while that of 1895 was also on a very large scale. The Scottish 

 records of 1895 will be found carefully studied and digested by Mr. 

 W. Eagle Clarke in the Annals of Scottish Natural History, 1895, pp. 97- 

 108, and by Mr. J. Paterson in the Proceedings of the Natural History 

 Society of Glasgow for the same year. 



Apart from these occurrences, which are directly due to stress of 

 weather during the winter months, there is no reliable information as 

 to its presence with us at any other season, 3 though a few examples 

 have been obtained in summer plumage. Its breeding haunts lie far 

 to the northward, and it has not been known to nest even on the 

 Faeroes, while on Iceland it is practically confined to Grimsey, 

 though possibly a few pairs may breed on the mainland. 



The Grimsey colony is not a large one, apparently consisting only 

 of about one hundred and fifty to two hundred pairs, but farther north 

 it becomes more and more numerous. Enormous colonies of many 

 hundred thousands of pairs exist in Spitzbergen, Franz Josef Land, 



1 Zoologist, 1895, p. 68. 2 Ibis, 1896, p. 276. 



3 One in full plumage was, however, obtained in the Monach Isles, Outer Hebrides, on June 

 24, 1893. 



VOL. HI. F 



