1O 
Along the whole coast-line there occurs hardly a holm, 
or an island large enough to provide sufficient food to keep a 
couple of sheep during the summer, without its being also in- 
habited by a pair of Oyster-catchers (Hamatopus ostralegus), 
some Ringed Plovers (A¢gialitis hiaticula), often also by the 
Turnstone (Strepsilas interpres), and some small Gulls and Terns 
(Sterna macrura). If the island is bigger, and more covered with 
heather or grass, there may nearly always be found there, in 
addition, one or two pairs of Eider Duck, and a sprinkling of the 
larger species of Gull, especially Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus). 
As we approach the larger bird-islands or egg-holms the 
bird-hosts are recognizable from a long distance. 
Upon these egg-holms is the home of the Eider. Every- 
where among the heather or in the scrub, the ducks are sitting 
close upon the five large yellowish-gray eggs, surrounded by the 
fluffy wall of down; it is well-known that they often place their 
nests quite close to the houses of the human inhabitants, 
even under the door-steps, or the floor of the kitchen. The 
Eider is often the islanders’ only domestic fowl; through 
the whole summer the broods lie scattered along the shore-edge, 
and the little brown-black ducklings dive gallantly into the surf 
after mussels, and other small creatures, and they also eagerly 
search for the fish-offal that is thrown away. Complete harmony 
prevails mutually between the families; if the young get separ- 
ated from their mother, they attach themselves to the nearest 
duck that they meet with, and one sees not unfrequently a duck 
in this way at the head of a row of over twenty small ducklings, 
which follow her like a string of beads on the surface of the 
water. 
The Greater Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus), the Grey-Lag 
Goose (Ansey cinereus), and the Arctic or Richardson’s Skua 
(Stevcovarius crepidatus) are also among the most frequent of the 
inhabitants of the egg-holm. And upon the largest of them, 
where the protection is strict, it not unfrequently happens that 
quite strange species settle themselves down to nest. Thus on 
B—— in Lofoten there have bred for many years a pair of 
Barnacle Geese (Bernicla leucopsis), a bird which nests nowhere 
else in the country. 
