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NOTES OxN THE BREEDING HABITS OF SOME 



OF OUR WINTER MIGRANTS IN THE SWEDISH 



PROVINCES OF JEMTLAND AND LAPLAND. 



BY 



W. G. SHELDON, F.E.S. 



Dull daj^s during a stay in these regions in June and 

 July, 1911, when the chief objects of my visit, diurnal 

 Lepidoptera, were not to be found, enabled me to make 

 the following observations on certain birds familiar to 

 us all in winter, but not breeding in the British Islands. 



I arrived in Jemtland on June 4th, and left it ten days 

 later, arriving at Abisko on the south side of the Torne 

 Traske on June 16th, and remaining there until July 18th. 

 The Torne Traske is a very beautiful lake sixty kilometres 

 in length, and of varying widths, which perhaps average 

 eight or nine kilometres. This lake is surrounded on 

 all sides by mountains of from 2,000 feet to 5,000 feet in 

 height, which rise steeply from it, and are covered 

 for the lower 500 feet by forests of birch, with an occa- 

 sional pine and mountain-ash ; in the swamps, which are 

 numerous, there are thickets of sallow of many species. 

 These forests are composed of trees twenty feet or so in 

 height, except in the more sheltered spots, where they 

 reach thirty and even forty feet. The undergrowth is 

 chiefly Vaccinium of all four of our British species, and 

 in the open, swampy moors which occur at intervals, 

 there is a very fine Alpine flora of such plants as Silene 

 acaulis, Saxifraga oppositifolia, Dryas octopetala, Trientalis 

 europosa, Andromeda pollifolia, A. tetragona, Azalea 

 procumbens, Rhododendron lapponica. 



Perhaps the most conspicuous bird I saw in Sweden 

 was the Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris), which the Swedes 

 call " Kolfrast." In the bogs of Mattmar, in Jemtland, 

 I saw several pairs breeding, in all cases in pine or spruce 

 trees ; of two of these nests examined on June 9th, one 

 had five eggs hard-set, the other four eggs not incubated ; 

 this was at an altitude of 1,014 feet according to 



