50 FALCON ID^E. 



only from that of Icelandic examples in being slightly darker 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1870, p. 384) ; but the British Museum 

 contains an immature specimen from Kotzebue Sound, which 

 is as deeply coloured as the Labrador birds, and might at 

 first sight be taken for a Gyr-Falcon. Whether Falco 

 islandus crosses to Asia cannot be determined-, for the dark 

 examples seen by Dr. von Middendorff and Herr Radde in 

 Siberia, and mentioned in the foregoing article, were at least 

 as likely to have been the young of Falco gyrfalco. 



From information supplied to Mr. Hewitson by Mr. Proc- 

 tor, the latter saw in northern Iceland several deserted nests 

 of this Falcon, being too late to find any tenanted by the 

 owners. This was in the beginning of August, and from 

 one of them he took an addled egg. The nest was com- 

 posed of sticks and roots, and lined with wool, much re- 

 sembling that of a Raven, to which bird it might originally 

 have belonged. Strewn around it lay the remains of many 

 Whimbrels, Golden Plovers, Guillemots, and Ducks. All 

 the nests he saw were in cliffs, forming the boundaries of 

 freshwater lakes, but none of them so high in the mountains 

 as he expected to have found them. A similar account of a 

 nest, seen by him in 1821, is given by Faber. This, the 

 only one he found, was in south-western Iceland. It was 

 large and flat, placed on the upper part of an inaccessible 

 wall of rock. There were three full-grown young, two of 

 which, on the 6th of July, had already left it and sat near 

 by. The old birds flew around screaming, but did not attack 

 him. Remains of various species of sea-fowl lay about. 

 Later in the year, Faber adds, both young and old approach 

 the homesteads, where they sit on elevations, and often fight 

 with the Ravens. Four seems to be the proper complement 

 of eggs ; they are suffused or closely freckled with reddish- 

 orange or pale reddish-brown on a dull white ground, which 

 commonly is hardly discernible between the markings, 

 though these are sometimes collected into blotches of con- 

 siderable extent. Specimens measure from 2-48 to 2 '13, by 

 from 1-91 to 1'72 in. 



Modern falconers do not appear to value the Icelander so 



