4 BULLETIN 197, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



time on August 31st." He observed another on June 12, 1900, and 

 one was shot on June 10, 1915. On May 15, 1900, he was also informed 

 by a Greenlander from Sermilik, in the same district, that three had 

 been seen there about two days previously. It may be added that Alvin 

 Pedersen (1930) was informed by Greenlanders that the white wagtail 

 was often met with at Angmagsalik. F. S. Chapman (1932), orni- 

 thologist on the British Arctic Air Route Expedition, records a nest 

 with six eggs at Angmagsalik on June 16, 1931. He also records one 

 identified near the expedition's base, west of Sermilik Fjord in the 

 Angmagsalik district, on May 10 of the same year and two on May 16, 

 but none were seen there after May 17. Chapman remarks that the 

 white wagtail and several other species which breed in Iceland, only a 

 few hundred miles distant, "all appeared for a few days and then 

 vanished, as if they had overshot their destination." 



Alvin Pedersen (1926 and 1930) records white wagtails from the 

 Scoresby Sound district, considerably farther north. One was shot 

 at Cape Stewart on August 24, 1924, and on June 3, 1925, he saw one at 

 Cape Hope and a little later three at a puddle of thaw water. Men 

 working at Cape Hope knew the birds well ; they had been seen daily 

 for some days and there were thought to be two pairs. They were not 

 seen, however, after June 9. Another was believed to have been seen 

 and heard at Elvdal on August 15. In his 1930 paper Pedersen records 

 that in 1923 in the second half of March young wagtails were seen in 

 two places. "One can therefore conclude with certainty that the species 

 has bred at Scoresby Sound." Unfortunately, Pedersen's statement 

 is rather ambiguous. It seems obvious that young birds could not have 

 been hatched in Arctic Greenland in March, which seems extraordi- 

 narily early for any small birds except snow buntings to be present at 

 all. If birds young in the sense of being in their first spring are meant, 

 then it may be observed in the first place that it seems unlikely that 

 they could have been recognized as such without shooting and secondly 

 that they would only afford evidence of breeding if they were known to 

 have wintered in the country. Of this there is, of course, no evidence 

 whatever and in such a latitude it appears almost, if not quite, impos- 

 sible. The import of Pedersen's statement is thus obscure, and it is a 

 pity he was not more explicit. It seems logical to suppose that his 

 birds were early migrants. 



The above is, to the best of the writer's knowledge, the sum total 

 of published information with regard to the white wagtail in Green- 

 land, and it has seemed desirable to deal with it fairly fully, as the 

 status of this bird in Greenland seems never to have been adequately 

 dealt with in American literature. The A. O. U. Check-list quotes 

 only Godhavn (on the west coast) on the authority of a second-hand 

 statement by Prof. Alfred Newton in the "Arctic Manual" (1875) 

 jand ignores the much more numerous records for the east coast, except 



