260 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



217. LITTLE AUK. 



Mergulus alle. 



A stuffed specimen of the Little Auk was presented 

 to me by the Rev. W. Finch-Hatton, of Weldon 

 Kectory, in 1876, with the information that it was 

 picked up at Weldon after a gale of wind in the 

 winter of 1841, in the garden of the parish clerk, 

 and that it was kept alive for a few days in a large 

 bath at the rectory upon sticklebacks, in pursuit 

 of which it dived frequently. Lord Knightley, 

 writing to me in February 1876, informed me that 

 a Little Auk was shot within a mile of Fawsley 

 " more than six years ago " ; and Mr. A. G. Elliot 

 wrote to me that a bird of this species was picked 

 up in the neighbourhood of Stamford in the early 

 spring of 1881. Several other reports of the occur- 

 rence of Little Auks have reached me ; but, as I 

 shall show in another article, most of these referred 

 in reality to another species, and the only one that 

 strikes me as possibly authentic is that sent to me 

 by the late Mr. Miles Berkeley, of Benefield, in 1876, 

 of a " Little Auk, seen by one Wildash sitting erect 

 by Biggin Lake, very many years ago." I have 

 never seen a bird of this species alive, and can only 

 therefore borrow from the authorities the information 

 that it breeds in enormous numbers in and about 

 Spitzbergen and certain other Arctic localities, and 

 wanders irregularly during the autumn and winter 

 to the southward, occasionally as far as the Canaries 

 and the Azores. It is rarely seen on land except 

 in its breeding-places, where it lays its single eg^ in 



