AUKS 
As twilight falls, grayish-black little auks rise from their Arctic cliffs 
in great swarms and head seaward to find their food. All during the night 
they forage for shrimps, crabs, snails and small marine worms. At dawn 
they rise from the sea to return to the shore. 
With their webbed feet and rounded tails, they can either paddle over 
the ocean’s surface or swim under water. But the extreme rearward bend of 
their knees hinders them in walking. When placed on flat ground, in fact, 
they are not even able to take off. From the cliffs, where they repose in an 
upright position closely resembling the stance of man, they fall into the air 
when ready to take flight. Their cry sounds like pi-u-lee, pi-u-lee. 
In some regions the little auks feed on planktons and floating seaweed. 
In stormy weather plankton sinks far below the surface of the sea, where 
the hungry birds are unable to reach it. During great storms thousands 
of these “ice birds” are driven to the shores of England, half dead from 
starvation. 
During June and July little auks lay single eggs in holes or tunnels 
deep enough to keep out the Arctic fox, the chief animal enemy of the 
diminutive birds; in some cases the eggs are placed on high ledges in 
loose rock as much as two hundred feet above sea-level. The pale greenish- 
blue egg is about one and one half inches long and takes twenty-four days 
to incubate. The parents bring their chicks mouthfuls of shrimp and crabs 
until they are full-grown. 
The auks are almost completely marine, spending the major portion 
of their lives on the open ocean, many miles from shore. They come in 
only to breed, and then they gather in vast communities on the rocky shores. 
With the common razorbills of the English coast, the guillemots that in¬ 
habit both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America, and the puffins 
or sea-parrots of the Arctic, they form a distinct family of small and com¬ 
pact aquatic birds. The puffins are amazingly grotesque with their enor¬ 
mous, brilliantly colored beaks. 
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