NORWEGIAN TEE-FALCON. 23 
"We had not long left the track on the river when a Falcon flew 
from the rock where the nest was supposed to be, and soon after- 
wards turning back, settled on the trunk of a dead tree, once or twice 
uttering a cry. I now knew there was a nest, and in a few minutes 
more I saw it looking very large and with a black space about it, 
as though it were in the mouth of a little cave in the face of the 
rock. This was a joyful moment, but not so much so as when the 
hen bird flew off with somewhat cramped wings and settled on a little 
stump some thirty yards from the nest. I would not let Ludwig 
shoot. We were ascending the hill, and might be fifty yards off when 
she left the nest. I took off my shoes, though there was a deep 
snow everywhere except just on the face of the rock, and first tried 
it from above, but it seemed hardly practicable. Then I went below, 
and with the Lapp to support my feet, and Ludwig to give me 
additional help with a pole, I managed to climb up. Just at the last 
bit I had to rest some time. Then I drew myself up, and saw the 
four eggs to my right hand, looking small in the middle of a large 
nest. Again I waited, to get steady for the final reach. I had only 
a bit of stone to stand on, not bigger than a walnut, frozen to the 
surface of the ledge which sloped outwards. I put two of the eggs 
into my cap, and two into my pockets, and cautiously withdrew. The 
nest appeared to have been quite freshly made, and therefore by the 
bird herself the sticks were thick, certainly more so than those used 
by Ravens or Buzzards, and, unlike the nests of the latter which I 
saw the next day, they were barkless and bleached. The only lining 
was a bundle or two of coarsish dry grass. As I returned I touched 
the eggs on a point of rock above me, luckily without injuring them. 
I handed them down in a glove at the end of a pole which the 
Lapp improvised for me, after the fashion of a church collecting-bag; 
and when they were placed in a safe corner, my feet were put in the 
right place, and I descended in safety. There were young inside 
perhaps one and a half inches long with heads as big as horse-beans." 
One of the twenty-seven nests noticed by Mr. Wolley was built 
in a tree; all the others in cliffs except the same bird which built in 
a tree did the same thing the next year. Professor Newton has figured 
six selected specimens which are beautifully drawn and coloured by 
chromo-lithography. 
Writing again in 1858, the same able naturalist further observes: — 
"In Scandinavia the forms found in Greenland and Iceland never 
seem to occur. There can be little doubt that young individuals, 
which are very difficult to distinguish from Icelanders, occasionally 
visit Britain, as they do the parallel countries on the continent." 
