220 
ALCIM. 
22nd of May, 1846.* In connection with, the occurrence of the 
bird at this season of the year, it may b& 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 
their 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 f Memoir on the Birds of Greenland,' pub- 
lished in the twelfth volume of the Transactions of the Lin- 
nsean Society, he observes that it “ was abundant in Baffin's Bay 
and Davis's Straits ; and in latitude 7 6° 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 Magdalena 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 Botge 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. R. J. Montgomery mentions two birds as shot near Howth some years 
ago, and one individual having been seen by him in the river Boyne, near Drogheda, 
in the winter of 1849-50. 
f Mr. Macgillivray was informed to that effect. ‘ Manual of Brit. Birds,’ vol. ii. 
p. 215. 
X Yarrell, &c. 
