Breeding of the Crane in Lapland. 193 



and left it far behind. Its confidence was the more remarkable, 

 as, all the time we were with it, the old Cranes were flying round 

 near the ground at some distance from us, their necks and feet 

 fully stretched out as usual, but with a remarkable sudden cast- 

 ing up of the wings in a direction over the back after each down- 

 ward stroke, in place of the ordinary steady movement. At the 

 same time they were making a peculiar kind of low clattering or 

 somewhat gurgling noise, of which it is very difficult to give an 

 intelligible description, and now and then they broke out into a 

 loud trumpeting call not unlike their grand ordinary notes, 

 which, audible at so great a distance, gladden the ears of the 

 lover of nature. As we went away I saw one of the Cranes 

 alight where we had left the young. Later in the day I had a 

 longing wish to have another look at my young friends. I 

 thought of the old naturalists — who would have called them 

 " peepers " I suppose — one of whom wrote of the Crane in our 

 fens, ''ejus pipiones sapissime vidi." To see them now-a- 

 days twice in a life, and that not in England, would be a con- 

 solation. But it was not to be so; we came back to the spot 

 where we had parted with them, rested for three or four hours 

 round a stone that projected from the marsh, but we saw and 

 heard nothing more of either old or young Cranes. In a morass 

 with another name (which it took from a hill that overlooked 

 it), " Kharto uoma" but which was only separated from " Iso 

 uoma" by an interval of a mile or two of birch thicket, there were 

 also Cranes, aud I found their nest with the egg-shells lying in 

 the water by it, and so many quill-feathers scattered about, 

 that I almost feared some accident had happened to the sitting 

 bird. 



The following year, 1854, on the 20th of May, I went with 

 only Ludwig my servant-lad, to look for the Crane's nest in 

 "Iso noma.'' We saw no birds, and the spot where the nest 

 had been the preceding year was not easy to find in so extensive 

 a marsh. So we quartered our ground, working carefully up 

 one strip of hai'der bog and down the next. After some hours 

 of heavy walking I saw the eggs — joyful sight ! — on an adjacent 

 slip in a perfectly open place. The two eggs lay with their long 

 diameters parallel to one another, and there was just room for a 



