SIDE UGHTS ON BIRDS 



is seen that every patch of earth in the crevices 

 of the rock is shaped into a field, and that the 

 main agriculture is conducted on angles which, 

 in some cases, approach the perilous. Bird-life 

 is by no means plentiful, but here, as elsewhere, 

 the starlings are constantly in evidence. Before 

 we arise the famihar cry greets us, as sternus alights 

 on the spout of the hotel to feed its clamouring 

 young, and later, at every landing stage, the 

 black line which Jefferies says the starling appears 

 to draw through the air may be seen by the eye 

 of imagination, as the birds press in their urgent 

 business to and fro, from every vantage ground in 

 house or shed where a nesting site has been found. 

 It is an interesting matter for speculation how 

 far the absence of darkness in the Norwegian 

 summer night affects the bird population. Cer- 

 tainly, in the case of the starling, it appears to 

 delude the parent birds into working overtime 

 to an extraordinary extent. Seeing the birds 

 still busily engaged at midnight and again often 

 as early as three in the morning one might well 

 wonder if they ever sleep at all. Smoking a 

 final pipe, however, on the balcony of the hotel, 

 which commands a view of a small fir-wood 

 directly beneath, we are able to find something 

 in the way of a solution of the question. At 12.10 

 we note a starling leave its nestlings, still noisy 

 and hungry, in their cleft in the roof. It flies 

 down and alights on a fairly conspicuous bough 

 near the top of a fir tree. Here it remains 

 motionless for half-an-hour or more, until we 

 retire. Looking from the balcony again at 2.45, 

 the dark form still faces us clearly visible in the 

 broadening daylight. At 3.10 the clamour of 

 the young stirs again the still air, and a glance 

 from the window shows that the parents have 

 resumed their daily task. 



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