44 TRAVELS OF A NATURALIST 



a beat along the hillside, in which beat I killed two fine 

 males. In many places the snow was very deep and 

 soft, and we sank often up to our middles in it. We 

 crossed a burn, Ole going first and feeling the way with 

 a stick. We took another beat and I killed a pair — ^ 

 and ? — right and left. We searched in vain for the 

 nest. We saw one Snow Bunting, but had not the 

 small gun handy at the time. 



The Ptarmigan's nest was at the root of a dwarf birch, 

 a slight hollow sparingly lined with a few sprigs of lichen, 

 and a few of the bird's own feathers. The eggs were 

 quite fresh, dark, handsome specimens. 



It is to be noted that the Ptarmigan breeding here 

 about the same date as in Scotland, must begin to lay 

 whenever the snow has sufficiently melted to leave bare 

 patches of dwarf birch. The whole plateau of the Fille- 

 fjeld to-day was covered with snow, leaving ' islands,' 

 so to speak, of birch-covered ground. In many of the 

 snow patches, as already said, we sank often up to our 

 middles, the sun being strong and having rapidly softened 

 it since early morning. 



In the present state of the Fjeld, Ptarmigan are much 

 more easily seen than they are on our stormy Highland 

 mountains ; but Ole tells us that later, when the dwarf 

 birch is out, it is far more difficult to see them. The 

 most he has killed on the ground in a day to his own 

 gun was eighteen, and several times seventeen. They 

 are not so plentiful now, or anything like it, as they 

 were some years ago. 



We saw the fresh track of a herd of Keindeer on the 

 side of a snowdrift at the foot of the mountain (Oddenaes) 

 about 1| miles off. The herd must have been startled at 

 the sound of our last shots. Ole ' believed ' that there 

 must have been over a hundred Reindeer in the herd, 

 judging from the appearance of the track. Single tracks 



