secure from their enemy, the foxes, which prowl round in great numbers, ever watching for a meal.
AUK-CATCHING. Having told Kalutunah that I wanted to accompany him and help him at auk-catching, that worthy individual came to my tent early one morning, much rejoiced that the Nalegaksoak had so favored him, and, bright and early, hurried me to the hill-side. The birds were more noisy than usual, for they had just returned in immense swarms from the sea, where they had been getting their breakfast.[1] Kalutunah carried a small net, made of light strings of seal-skin knitted together very ingeniously. The staff by which it was held was about ten feet long. After clambering over the rough, sharp stones, we arrived at length about half-way up to the base of the cliffs, where Kalutunah crouched behind a rock and invited me to follow his example. I observed that the birds were nearly all in flight, and were, with rare exceptions, the males. The length of the slope on which they were congregated was about a mile, and a constant stream of birds was rushing over it, but a few feet above the stones; and, after making in their rapid flight the whole length of the hill, they returned higher in the air, performing over and over again the complete circuit. Occasionally a few hundreds or thousands of them would drop down, as if following some leader; and in an instant the rocks, for a space of several rods, would swarm all over with them,—their black backs and pure white breasts speckling the hill very prettily.
- ↑ The food of the little auk, as indeed the food of all of the Arctic water-fowl, consists of different varieties of marine invertebrata, chiefly crustacea, with which the Arctic waters abound. It is owing to the riches of the North water in these low forms of marine life that the birds flock there in such great number during the breeding season, which begins in June and ends in August.
