NORWEGIAN BIRD NOTES 



CHAPTER XIX 



British Birds in a new Setting. Birds in the Open Sea. 

 Stavanger. Bergen. White Wagtaies, Hornellen. 

 MuEDOEN. Ubiquitous Starlings. How Absence of 

 Darkness affects Birds. Young Fieldfares. The 

 NoRDFjoRD. The Stryn Valley. Concentration of 

 Birds near Homesteads. Fieldfare Colonies. Pre- 

 carious Nesting of Spotted Flycatcher. Pied Fly- 

 catchers. Wheatears. Familiar Bird Figures Missing. 

 The Josterd.al Glacier. Common Gulls Nesting. San- 

 dene AND Skei. Tame Magpies. Pied Flycatchers in 

 the Homes. Sandpipers and REDSiL^NTiS. A Dipper's 

 Nest, TheBrambling. NedreVasenden. Roof Gardens. 



Ryper. 



Norway is essentially a land for the bird-lover. 

 It may be that the English ornithologist, even he 

 who wanders far from the beaten tourist tracks, 

 may not meet with many species entirely new 

 to him — ^the charm lies in the fact that here he 

 will see birds which he has known as winter 

 visitors only, nesting in sunny valleys at the feet 

 of the eternally snow-capped hills ; that here 

 birds, rare in the British Isles, become of regular 

 occurrence ; and, finally, that the shyest species 

 appear to throw off their reserve in Norway, 

 and being unmolested by the gentle inhabitants, 

 become the familiar friends of man, rearing their 

 nestlings about his home-steads, and alighting 

 upon bough, verandah, or roadway almost within 

 reach of his hand. 



In this land of mountain, pine-wood and lake, 

 where mighty rivers leap over rocks a thousand 

 feet high, and where the snows of the glacier 



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