126 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



higher sites close by, and many of them would have seemed more eligible. It was 

 just at the lowest edge of the strip, but so much exposed that I thought I should be 

 able to see even the eggs themselves from a spot at a considerable distance, to which 

 I proposed to go. There was a common story amongst the people of the country, 

 that the crane, if its nest were disturbed, would carry off its eggs under its wings to 

 another place, so I purposely handled one of the eggs, and hung up a bit of birch- 

 bark on a birch-tree beyond the nest, as a mark by which to direct my telescope. 

 Then I went with Ludwig to a clump of spruce growing on some dry sandy land, 

 which rose out of the midst of the marsh. Here I made a good ambuscade of 

 spruce boughs, crept into it, got Ludwig to cover me so that even the crane's eye 

 could not distinguish me, and sent him to make a fire to sleep by on the far side of 

 the wood, with strict orders on no account to c<3me near my hiding-place. I kept my 

 glass in the direction of the nest, but it was long before I saw anything stir. In the 

 meantime the marsh was by no means quiet ; ruffs were holding something between a 

 European ball and an East Indian nautch. Several times ' peet root, peet root,' to 

 use the words by which the Finns express the sound, told where the snipes were. A 

 cock pintail dashed into a bit of water, calling loud for its mate. The full, melan- 

 choly wailing of the black-throated diver came from the river ; watch-dogs were bark- 

 ing in the distance ; I heard the subdued hacking of wood and the crackling of Lud- 

 wig's fire. It was already about midnight ; fieldfares were chasing each other through 

 the wood ; one came pecking about my feet, and another, settling on the branches 

 that covered my back, almost made my ears ache with the loudness of its cries. I 

 often heard the waft of known wings, but three times there sounded overhead the 

 sweeping wave of great wings, to which my ears were unaccustomed. I could scarcely 

 doubt it was the cranes, but I dare not turn up my eye ; I even once or twice heard a 

 slight chuckle that must have been from them. At length, as I had rny glass in the 

 direction of the nest, which was three or four hundred yards off, I saw a tall gray 

 figure emerging from amongst the birch-trees, just beyond where I knew the nest 

 must be, and there stood the crane in all the beauty of nature, in the full side light of 

 an Arctic summer night. She came on with her graceful walk, her head up, and she 

 raised it a little higher, and turned her beak sideways and upwards as she passed 

 round the tree on whose trunk I had hung the little roll of bark. I had not antici- 

 pated that she would observe so ordinary an object. She probably saw that her eggs 

 were safe, and then she took a beat of twenty or thirty yards in the swamp, pecking, 

 and apparently feeding. At the end of this beat she stood still for a quarter of an 

 hour, sometimes pecking and sometimes motionless, but showing no symptoms of sus- 

 picion of my whereabouts, and indeed no manifest sign of fear. At length she 

 turned back and passed her nest a few paces in the opposite direction, but soon came 

 in to it ; she arranged with her beak the materials of the nest, or the eggs, or both ; 

 she dropped her breast gently forward, and, as soon as it touched, she let the rest of 

 her body sink gradually down. And so she sits, with her neck up and her body full in 

 my sight, sometimes preening her feathers, especially of the neck, sometimes lazily 

 pecking about, and for a long time she sits with her neck curved like a swan's, though 

 principally at its upper part. Now she turns her head backwards, puts her beak under 

 the wing, apparently just in the middle of the ridge of the back, and so she seems 

 fairly to go to sleep. I was now sure the crane would not carry off her eggs. After 

 enjoying for a short time longer this sight and no epithet is yet in use which ex- 

 presses the nature of the feelings created by such scenes in the minds of those who 



