23 



were, even up to within the last few years, only published a couple 

 of short notes made by Middendorff during forty years on the 

 Taimyr peninsula in North Siberia (about 74 N. lat.).* 



Here in Norway it seems, however, on the whole to nest only 

 occasionally. It generally elects to take up its abode in com- 

 panies of from one to some few pairs, in the middle of colonies 

 of its nearest relation, T. temmincki, and its behaviour during 

 the nesting season is almost exactly like theirs. It seeks its 

 food at the same feeding-places by the swamps on the coast ; 

 and by its extremely anxious demeanour, when one approaches 

 its nest, it discloses as artlessly as its companions, where the four 

 prettily-pencilled eggs, so highly valued by oologists, lie amongst 

 the heather. The nest is even more skilfully constructed than 

 its relation's, and is lined at the bottom with a thick layer of 

 fine grass bents, almost like that of a pipit. 



During the nesting season this bird also performs a play, which 

 is executed much in the same way as with the preceding species ; 

 but besides that, the male, and sometimes the female, utters a 

 delicate twittering song from the ground in proximity to the 

 nest. Here also it is the male on whom the burden of rearing 

 the young is essentially incumbent. 



We pause at length by the largest of the pools of water, 

 which glitter among the cloudberry flowers and the layers of 

 turf. Numberless gulls make their toilet here, as they prefer for 

 this purpose the fresh water to the sea. Pair after pair of the 

 Red-throated Diver (Colymbus septentrionalis) lie scattered over the 

 water, or exercise their two tiny brownish-black young in diving 

 in the small pools of water in the neighbouring swamp. On this 

 island, where they are protected, this species, otherwise so little 

 gregarious during the breeding season, has joined together into 

 small colonies, a thing which has hardly ever been observed 

 elsewhere : and when the author, in 1872, visited the island for 

 the first time, there were at least thirty pairs nesting in its 

 different tarns. All these pools, whose water is black and mixed 



* In June, 1872, on this very island, the author met with several pairs of this 

 species settled, and under circumstances which plainly showed that they bred here. 

 But in 18755 as ' s known, Seebohm and Harvie Brown first found both eggs and 

 young in the Gebet Tundra, near the mouth of the Petchora. In 1880 the author 

 found several nests in two different localities on the shores of Porsanger Fjord. 



