O64 GRUS COMMUNIS. 
Kangosjirvi winter-road. He took it home, but it died of an accident 
in which its leg was broken. In 1857. Niemin Apoo saw the birds 
here, as he went after the Aijivaara Ospreys’ nest [cf. § 86]. He 
told me, and I meditated a search; but he also told the Niemi 
lads, and they lost no time but searched in the night of the 4th and 
5th June. As they debouched into the myr they sawa Crane stalk- 
ing on one of the belts (for it is a belty myr) to the right. They 
went away and still heard the Cranes, for another one made its 
appearance about the same place; and, returning, they commenced a 
search. It was very sloppy between the belts, the boot often sinking 
a foot or fourteen inches in water before it came to the slippery ice 
bottom. They soon found the nest in a little tuft, and as a Hawk 
was watching them, and as they also found on trying the eggs in water 
that they were much sat upon, they dared not leave them to bring me 
[thither], as they otherwise would have done. The next morning I 
went with Johan to look at the nest, and try tosee the birds. It was 
very interesting from its peculiarly open situation. The myr is a 
smallish one, perhaps pot half an English mile across. It has 
ridges of elevation on which grow small birches, dwarf-birch, and 
other shrubs, but some of them are only moss and would offer 
favourable situation for the nest. The spot chosen was in the 
centre of an open space, surrounded by ridges, which space might be 
nearly three hundred yards across. This was now covered by water, 
but overgrown by the scanty kind of Carex or grass, which flourishes 
in such situations on the top of the bog. In the middle of the space 
a mossy elevation of little more than one stride across, and rising only 
above the 
general level of the bog. This was generally of green moss, but 
under the nest was a spot of reindeer moss, on which the nest was 
placed, and from its fresh condition proved that the nest was not from 
a previous year in the same spot. There were fonr or five sprigs of 
dwarf-birch, four or five inches high, close to the nest on one side, 
but nothing at all in the way of shelter or cover, so that the bird must 
have been conspicuous from every side as it sat upon its eggs, and 
from a considerable distance. The nest itself was made wholly of the 
same kind of sedgy grass which grew in the myr, sometimes plucked 
from the roots, whitish-looking as it lay on the ground. It was 
perfectly flat, about twenty-seven inches in diameter, and some three 
inches in substance, or some four in places. It was only elevated 
three or four inches out of water, indeed its botiom was dripping wet, 
and this may have either faded the eggs, as Divers’ eggs are some- 
a few inches—at the highest part perhaps nine inches 
