188 BIRDS OF THE HUMBER DISTRICT. 



The Puffin lays but one egg, at the bottom of a deep 

 crevice or hole in the cliff, the young, unlike those 

 of the Guillemot, remaining in their holes and on the 

 rocks till such time as they can fly down. By the 

 middle of August the young and old have congregated 

 in immense flocks, and usually before the end of the 

 month entirely forsake the vicinity of the land, going 

 seaward and southward. 



Later in the autumn we find them with Razor-bills 

 and Guillemots off the estuary of the Humber and 

 along the Lincolnshire coasts. 



244. ALCA TORDA, Linnaeus. Razor-billed Auk. 



Provincial. Marrot. 



Like the preceding, nests annually at Flamborough, 

 but not nearly in such numbers as either the Puffin 

 or Guillemot. The Razor-billed Auk arrives in the 

 vicinity of its breeding-stations rather earlier than 

 the Guillemot. At Mamborough they are sometimes 

 seen near the rocks in December, like the Guillemot 

 becoming common in January. 



I am told that, from some cause or other, compara- 

 tively very few nested at Flamborough in the summer 

 of 1871 ; and the cliff-climbers say they took very 

 few eggs. During a three days' visit which I made 

 to that headland in the first week of August I did 

 not observe more than half-a-dozen of these birds. 

 Yet, in the preceding summer, 1870, on the 18th of 



