THE LITTLE-AUK 45 



together with low, marmot-like noises. " When close to their nests 

 they would come and circle very near to my head, checking their 

 flight by holding out their webbed feet, and making short wing 

 strokes." 1 



On account of the situation of the nest, and the inaccessibility of 

 its breeding haunts, it is naturally difficult to obtain accurate data as 

 to the length of the incubation period, but Hantzsch estimates it at 

 about twenty-four days. There is no doubt that both sexes share in 

 the duty of incubation, for not only are breeding spots found in both 

 males and females, but Dr. Le Hoi caught many of both sexes on the 

 eggs. From early July onward the young may be found in the 

 nesting-holes, tiny little creatures, covered with uniform sooty or 

 almost black down. One taken by Mr. Ingram ate raw fish and meat 

 with avidity, after food had once been forced down its throat, and 

 learned to call eagerly whenever it heard him speak. He remarks 

 that it had a very curious habit of wagging its head from side to side 

 after every mouthful. 2 At a later period, when half fledged, the 

 under parts are white, according to Saunders. 



By the end of August most of the breeding-places have been 

 deserted by the young, which have now taken to the open water. 

 The larger gulls and the foxes have, however, taken toll of them on 

 their way. They do not disappear altogether from their most northerly 

 breeding-places till about the first or second week in September, 

 while Arnold Pike notes their last appearance in his winter diary on 

 Spitzbergen under the date October 13. Gradually the great flocks 

 move southward before the approach of winter, but as with the 

 millions of other Arctic rock birds, such as Briinnich's guillemot, 

 Mandt's guillemot, Arctic puffin, etc., we have no definite information 

 as to how or where they spend the winter months. Somewhere or 

 other in the sunless North Atlantic these hosts of birds must winter, 

 but even the thousands of storm-driven rotches which occasionally 



1 Avicultural Magazine, New Series, vol. iii. (1894-95) p. 358. 



2 Of. Dr. Burkitt's account of the behaviour of the great-auk captured alive off the Water- 

 ford coast, quoted in the Birds of Ireland, p. 359. 



