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on Rock Ptarmigan , Harlequin Ditck, etc .


numerous. I myself caught on a fly a four-pound brown trout

that had previously swallowed two Eider chicks.


I brought back with me from Iceland a pair of Falcons

taken from the nest, and it was interesting to note the gradual

growth of the feathers and alteration in the birds’ disposition as

they grew older. There seems no difficulty whatever in rearing

these birds, but I was surprised to see a pair which had been

reared in Iceland on fish diet were quite as fine as others reared

on meat. Many intelligent Icelanders say that the Grey-White

Falcons (said to be “Greenland Falcons”) are really the same as

the Icelandic Falcon which, they say, changes to grey and white

plumage when a few years old. I only saw one of these grey-

white birds. It was darker than the specimen “ Greenland

Falcon ” in the South Kensington Museum. Perched on a point

of lava rock its plumage harmonised precisely with its surround¬

ings, but when seen near at hand the bird presented a magnificent

•spectacle.


Red-necked Phalaropes are very plentiful at present in the

neighbourhood of Myvatn, and in the latter part of June their

nesting operations were in full progress.


All the nests I found were in small tufts of grass within a

few feet of water. In one case the sitting bird returned to his

nest whilst I remained watching within a distance of five yards.

In another case the parent bird, alarmed at my approach, took a

solitary chick to swim into the middle of a little pool about eight

yards across. After a minute or so, finding nothing happened,

he brought the chick ashore and began to brood it in full view of

me on the other side of the pool. I do not know whether Red¬

necked Phalaropes have been much observed brooding their

young, but this was a very pretty sight, the chick standing up¬

right and reminding me (though of course on a very different

scale) of the little Avocet at the Zoo in 1907.


I happened to come across a Dane who was stationed in

Iceland to collect skins, and he showed me, in his bedroom, a

Phalarope running about the floor. I asked him to catch it for

me, which he did, and I found it in good condition. He told me

it was a bird he had winged when shooting three weeks previously,

and it since then lived in his bedroom, being fed on maggots and



