The Puffin. j 59 



Flamborough Head, and on the Fames, where they have their head-quarters on North 

 Wamses. In the English Channel it is not numerous, but breeds in the Isle of 

 Wight, Dorset, Devon and more commonly on the Scilly Isles. About the mouth 

 of the Bristol Channel its numbers increase enormously. It gives its name to 

 Lundy Island, where countless hosts are to be seen, and some of the islands off 

 the coast of Pembrokeshire {e.g. Skomer and Ramsey) are resorted to by thousands 

 of Puffins. Writing of Pembrokeshire the Rev. Murray A. Mathew says he does 

 not think he should exaggerate were he to say that the Puffins in number are in 

 summer equal to all the other birds in the county added together. Colonies are 

 to be found on other parts of the coast of Wales, though none breed in Cardigan, 

 nor on the north-west coast of England, although some do so on the Isle of Man. 



Immediately after the breeding season, in August, the Puffins leave the shore 

 and go out to sea, and probably to some extent migrate southwards, those birds which 

 are found on our coasts in winter being probably visitors from further north. It 

 is indeed at that season not a common bird near any part of our coasts, and its 

 presence in British waters is chiefly indicated by individuals washed ashore dead 

 after stormy weather, or driven far inland. But dead birds washed ashore are far 

 less numerous than the Razorbills and Guillemots found in the same condition. 

 Those individuals which do occur on our coasts in winter are chiefly immature, 

 and form only the smallest fraction of the countless hosts of Puffins which leave 

 us in August. The latter must keep far to sea, but they have not been observed 

 to go far south ; perhaps they do both — but where they go to is a mystery. But 

 curiously enough the Puffin has the inenviable reputation of being blown inland 

 in autumn, or late autumn, chiefly, more frequently than any other species of the 

 Alcidce, although since the great immigration of January 1895, the inland records 

 of the Little Auk are perhaps more numerous. But it must be added that Puffins 

 in their first year are sometimes reported as Little Auks. In Oxfordshire seven 

 instances of the occurrence of the Puffin have come under my notice. 



The Puffin inhabits the North Atlantic, and, outside the British Islands, breeds 

 in the Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland and southwards to the 

 Bay of Fundy. It is found along the coast of Norway, chiefly in the north (but not 

 in the Baltic), on the Channel Islands and parts of the coast of France, while 

 Mr. H. Saunders, when passing in a steamer, saw large numbers of Puffins off the 

 Berlengas Islands near the mouth of the Tagus early in June 1868; but Mr. W. 

 C. Tait heard nothing of their breeding there during his visit (Ibis 1887, p. 400). 

 A Puffin breeds on Jan Mayen Island, Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, and in 

 Greenland up to 64° N. lat. ("Zool." 1880, p. 211). Mr. H. Saunders states that it 

 is met with up to lat. 70 N. But the birds breeding in North Greenland, Jan 



