ICELAND FALCON. 49 



1866 at Glendaruel, in Argyllshire. As regards England, 

 Thomjison quotes from a letter of Mr. Hancock's the occur- 

 rence of a young bird at Bellingham, on the North Tyne, in 

 January, 1845, which was then in the collection of Mr. Charles 

 Adamson of Newcastle ; and this capture is also recorded by 

 Mr. Bold, in ' The Zoologist ' for that year. The same 

 letter also notices an Iceland Falcon, in its first plumage, 

 killed at Normanby near Guisborough, in Yorkshire, in 

 March, 1837, of which a brief description, by the late Mr. 

 Hogg, appeared in the volume of the useful periodical just 

 mentioned. Both these birds are now in Mr. Hancock's col- 

 lection. Mr. Borrer possesses an adult Iceland Falcon shot at 

 Mayfield, in Sussex, in January, 1845. These, with an im- 

 mature specimen in the Norwich Museum, killed at Inver- 

 broome, in Eoss-shire, 1851 — probably one of those already 

 included by Mr. Gray — and a young male from Scotland, in 

 the possession of Mr. Gurney, Junior, are all the British 

 examples which at the present time can be, with any amount 

 of certainty, referred to the Iceland Falcon. 



This bird is believed to breed in Greenland, but only in the 

 southern parts, and seems to be of not very rare occurrence 

 along the coast of Labrador, where, according to Audubon, 

 it breeds ; but the examples figured as having been shot from 

 their nests by him, are obviously immature, and not adult, 

 as he and his party imagined. It is worthy of remark that 

 many of the specimens obtained from Labrador are very dark 

 in colour, but they seem to be always birds of the year. To 

 judge from Richardson's account, it is not uncommon in the 

 Fur-Countries, wdiere it, as well as Falco candicans, pro- 

 bably breeds. On the western side of the continent, adults 

 have been obtained in Alaska, where it is said by Mr. Dall 

 to be resident, and usually confined to the mountains, breed- 

 ing, according to Professor Spencer F. Baird, both there and 

 on the Lower Mackenzie River indifferently on trees* and 

 cliffs. The plumage of specimens from this territory trans- 

 mitted by that naturalist to England for comparison, diff"ers 



* In Lapland Falco gyrfalco, though usually breeding on cliffs, occasionally 

 has its nest in a tree. — Ootheca WoUeyana, pp. 95, 96. 



VOL. I. H 



