168 Mr. A. C. Chapman's Birds' -N cat iny 



breeding, for in the ovaries of some whicli I examined the eggs 

 were but slightly developed. The feathers around their bills 

 were always stained purple with the juice of the '^krokeboer/^ 

 a fell-berry on which they feed. I often noticed in the hollow 

 bare trunks of the decayed birch trees large accumulations of 

 red berries from which Redpoles and Bramblings frequently 

 flew up as one approached ; and it seems as if these berries 

 form a winter store for some creatures which reside there, 

 probably squirrels, though we never saw any. The Mealy 

 Kedpole is known to winter here, but the Brambling migrates 

 south. To-night the midnight sun was up in his fullest 

 majesty, but no heat seemed to reach the earth, the air being 

 clear and frosty. 



June 12th. At 9.30 a.m. we left Gulholmen and, with a 

 Lap at one end of our boat and a Qvane at the other, we 

 " poled " incessantly up the now open river until we reached 

 Pulmak at 3.30 a.m. on the following morning. I was sur- 

 prised at the absence of bird-life, although there were exten- 

 sive mud-banks and shoals, apparently well adapted for the 

 Waders. We landed at several likely-looking spots on the 

 way, at one of which a pair of Wood-Sandpipers clearly had 

 a nest. Common Sandpipers, Ring-Plovers, Temminck's 

 Stints, and Long-tailed Ducks were all the birds we ob- 

 served. About six miles north of Pulmak, and about mid- 

 night, I flushed a strange-looking pair of birds from an 

 " ene'^ (juniper) bush. As they went away I mistook them 

 fur Green Woodpeckers. I shot one of them as it glided 

 away with undulating flight, and my surprise was great to 

 pick up a Piue-Grosbeak [Piaicola enucleutor) . Just then 

 Trinus cried out that he had found a nest, and on my com- 

 ing up, there was the pretty wickerwork nest with two eggs of 

 the Pine-Grosbeak. On looking about we soon saw the other 

 bird sitting callously quite close to us, and she completed the 

 series. The occurrence of this species north of the Arctic 

 circle had not previously, according to Professor Collett 

 (Orn, North. Norway, p. 22), been satisfactorily established. 

 The plumage of the Pine- Grosbeak appears to have always 

 been an unsettled problem, so 1 will merely state that both 



