\\g A. L. V. Manniche. 



Koch and Bertelsen did not meet with it farther North than 

 lat. 80° 30' n. (June 9»^ 1907). 



Mylius-Erichsen undertook a boat excursion along the coast 

 while the ship was bound in the ice a little North of Кар Bismarck, 

 and here he observed a flock of 9 flying Divers. 



He look them to be Colymbus glacialis but the precise descrip- 

 tion of the size, cry and flight of the birds makes me believe, that 

 they were C. sepientrionalis^ . 



The Divers arrived at the lakes by the ship's-harbour and at 

 Stormkap in the first half of June. In 1907 the first Diver was 

 noticed June the 8"\ in 1908 three days later. Solitary males ap- 

 peared first; they were flying extremely high uttering a very strong 

 resounding cackling, while they searched for open water, which 

 was very scarce on the first days after their arrival. 



Even in the smallest ponds the Divers were to be seen among 

 Somateria spectabilis and Pagonetta glacialis; but they very rarely 

 visited cracks or openings in the sea-ice. 



I did not find the Divers breeding in the summer 1907, but 

 they stayed in couples for a long while at the breeding places. The 

 number of birds corresponded to what I had noticed in 1906. In 

 1908 I found this species breeding whereever acceptable localities 

 were at hand: Larger or smaller fresh water ponds with fully or 

 partly grass-clad beaches. 



As the chicks are not, like those of the King-Eider and the 

 Long-tailed-Duck. brought to the salt лvater, the breeding places 

 will sometimes be chosen far from the coast. 



July the 6*h the first nest was observed near a little lake close 

 to the ship's-harbour; it was placed hardly 100 meter from the coast 

 and contained two but little incubated eggs. 



The breeding bird proved extremely shy and flew from the nest 

 when I appeared, at a distance of some 200 meters; it mounted to 

 a great height circling over the surface of the lake all the while 

 uttering its cackling and then took to the water far out in the bay, 

 from which it returned after a quarter of an hour or so to resume 

 its anxious cackling and circling high over the nest. 



After my departure from the lake the bird rushed down into 

 the water almost vertically, executing the peculiar twisting move- 

 ments, which are so characteristic of the flight of this species; then 

 it swam rapidly to the nest. 



The male would usually stay in a lake close by. The majorit}' 

 of the breeding females which I observed later on were not so shy; 



' The great Northeren Diver was onlj* once observed with certainty in North- 

 East Greenland. 



