220 ALCID^. 



22nd of May, 1846.* In connection with the occurrence of the 

 bird at this season of the year, it may be mentioned that Mr. 

 Darragh (of the Belfast Museum) when paying an ornithological 

 visit to the Craig of Ailsa, off the coast of Ayrshire, on the 19th 

 of May, 1849, saw four little auks. " One of them remained 

 on the water at the base of the Craig until approached by the 

 boat, within about eighty yards, when it flew off in the direction 

 which its three companions had taken a minute before." Their 

 being seen at this fine breeding-haunt of " rock-birds," inclusive 

 of the gannet, in the middle of May, suggests the probability of 

 then* nesting here ; though the species is not positively known to 

 do so on any part of the Scottish coast. At St. Abb^s Head it 

 has been said to breed. t It is generally regarded as only a winter 

 visitant to the British Islands. J 



It will have been remembered by ornithologists in connection 

 with Colonel Sabine's statement of seeing this bird on the coast 

 of Kerry, that he was particularly well acquainted with the 

 little auk. In his ' Memoir on the Birds of Greenland,' pub- 

 lished in the twelfth volume of the Ti-ansactions of the Lin- 

 naian Society, he observes that it " was abundant in Baffin's Bay 

 and Davis's Straits; and in latitude 76° was so numerous in the 

 channels of water separating fields of ice that many hundreds were 

 killed daily, and the ship's company supplied with them" (p. 537). 

 Capt. Beechey, in his account of the voyage towards the North 

 Pole in 1815, while describing the scenery of Magdaleua Bay, a 

 commodious inlet on the western side of Spitzbergen, remarks, — 

 " At the head of the bay there is a high pyramidal mountain of 

 granite, termed Rotge Hill, from the myriads of small birds of 

 that name which frequent its base, and appear to prefer its envi- 

 rons to any part of the harbour. They are so numerous that we 



* ]Mr. K. J. ]Montgomeiy mentions two birds as shot near Howth some years 

 ago, and one individual having been seen by him in the river Boyne, near Urogheda, 

 in the winter of 1849-50. 



t Mr. Macgillivi'ay was informed to that effect. ' Manual of Brit. Biixls,' vol. ii. 

 p. 215. 



+ Yarrell, &e. 



