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especially in the warm sunshine, belongs to the Siberian Willow- 
Wren (Phylloscopus borealis). Originally known in Europe through 
a solitary individual, shot during the autumnal migration at 
Heligoland, in 1854, it was later on found several times in 
North Russia, but was unknown to the west of Archangel until 
the year 1876, when the author met with it resident at Staburnes, 
in Porsanger. Its proper home is the whole of North Siberia, 
where its distribution extends to the east as far as Bering’s 
Straits and Alaska, consequently through about 180° of longi- 
tude. In Finmarken it is a recent immigrant, and its migration 
therefore does not pass southwards along the Baltic provinces,. 
like that of our other arctic small birds, but it migrates across the 
large river basins of Siberia in order to reach down to the 
Pacific coast, China and India, where its chief winter home is. If 
one could suppose that there dwelt a yearning for its native land 
in this little bird’s breast, then an individual which picked its 
food, at the New Year, in the bamboo thickets by the Chinese 
villages or at Malacca, might recollect how it, some months 
previously, tried its wings for the first time in the birch-covered 
slopes close by North Cape, and there it would return when the 
spring calls it. ’ 
The song is monotonous, as with all the Willow-Wrens, and 
consists only of a single note, zi-zi-zi, which is repeated quickly a 
dozen times over; then follows a short stop, which in the height 
of the singing time lasts half a minute, after which follows the 
same strain anew, and so ad infinitum. ‘This fervid song, unlike 
that of all other European songbirds, acts electrically upon the 
ornithologist, who knows that the life-history of the performer 
during the nesting season has hitherto been unknown to natural- 
ists. 
Until quite late years only one nest of this species had been 
found, namely, by Mr. Seebohm at Egasca (by the Jenisej), in 
July, 1877. That nest contained eggs; in July, 1885, the author 
found at M—— three nests, all with six or seven young. 
These latter nests were placed at the foot of a tree stem, or 
by a tree root, where the forest was thickest, and were well 
concealed by the flowering Cornus suecica, Veronica longifolia, 
geraniums, and Melica nutans. As with the other Willow-Wrens 
