BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 453 
About a dozen specimens were picked up in the " Sol way 
area." On this occasion, one which was found about 
November 21st in the streets of Sanquhar, some thirty 
miles inland, had apparently flown against an overhead 
telephone -wire : before it was recognised as an uncommon 
bird a dog had spoilt it.* A few weeks later another, found 
about eighteen miles inland, was sent from Lockerbie to 
Mr. Hugh Mackay for preservation.! 
The Little Auk is an inhabitant of Arctic seas, breeding 
in north Iceland, Nova Zembla, more numerously " in Green- 
land, Spitzbergen, and Franz Josef-land, but it does not 
occur in Arctic America nor to the east of the Kara Sea. In 
winter it migrates southwards, and a few are found on the 
northern shores [of the British Isles] every year, but in severe 
winters it often occurs in considerable numbers, and many 
storm-driven birds are found in a dying condition far inland, 
THE PUFFIN. Fratercula arctica (Linnaeus). 
An occasional visitant to the Solway. 
Thomas Maxwell in 1862 told Dr. Grierson that the only 
specimen of the Puffin that he had ever heard of as obtained 
in the county, was found at the mouth of the Nith about 
twenty years previously§ ; but living as he did in an inland 
locality, his knowledge of the status of the species may not 
have been extensive. The Puffin is certainly less numerous on 
our coast than the Razor biU and Guillemot, and it is not 
definitely known whether, like them, it breeds at Balcary 
and the Ross in the neighbouring county of Kirkcudbright. 
Many were washed ashore early in October, 1859,|| and a few 
during the stormy weather of the winter of 1881-1882.^1 In 
* Dumfries Courier and Herald, April 19th, 1894. 
•f Loc. cit. 
% Birds of Britain, 1907, p. 380. 
§ Grierson's MS. Notes, October 17th, 1862. 
II Dumfries Courier, October 4th, 1859. 
^ Trans. D, and G. Nat. Hist. Soc, February 3rd, 1882. 
