Auks, Murres, Puffins 



in the rocky crevices, it is amazing how each bird can tell its 

 own. The male birds are kept busy during incubation bringing 

 small fish in their bills to their sitting mates or relieving them 

 on the eggs while the females go a-fishing. For a short time 

 only the young birds are fed by regurgitation ; then small fish are 

 laid before them for them to help themselves, and presently they 

 go tumbling off the jutting rocks into the sea to dive and hunt in- 

 dependently. Particularly at the nesting season these razor-bills 

 utter a peculiar grunt or groan ; but the stragglers from the great 

 flocks that reach our coast in winter are almost silent. 



Dovekie 



(Alle alle) 



Called also: SEA DOVE; LITTLE AUK; PIGEON DIVER; 

 GREENLAND DOVE; ICE BIRD 



Length — 8.50 inches. 



Male and Female — In summer : Upper parts, including head and 

 neck all around, glossy black; shoulders and other wing 

 feathers tipped with white and forming two distinct patches. 

 Lower breast and underneath white. A few white touches 

 about eyes. Wings long for this family. Body squat, 

 owing to small, weak feet. Wing linings dusky. In -winter : 

 Resembling summer plumage, except that the black upper 

 parts become sooty and the white of lower breast extends 

 upward to the bill, almost encircling the neck. Sometimes 

 the white parts are washed with grayish and the birds have 

 gray collar on nape. 



Young — Like adults in winter, but their upper parts are duller. 



Range — From the farthest north in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, 

 south to Long Island, and occasionally so far as Virginia. 



Season — Winter visitor. 



In the chapter entitled " The End — by Death and by Rescue," 

 in his "Three Years of Arctic Service," General Greely, after tell- 

 ing how the wretched men at Cape Sabine were reduced to eating 

 their sealskin boots and were apparently in the last extremity, 

 goes on to describe how Long, one of the hunters of the expedi- 

 tion, one awful day succeeded in shooting four of these little 

 dovekies, two king-ducks, and a large guillemot. But the current 

 swept away all the birds except one dovekie! "I ordered the 



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