ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION IN ICELAND. S7 



in their case, the female is to the male what, according to the 

 general rule, the male is to the female — in size, colouring and 

 relative domestic habits, that is to say. But that is no evidenco 

 of the actual male being in a state of subjection to her, for the 

 converse of this by no means represents what is ordinarily the 

 case. That power belongeth unto the female, rather than 

 the male, has indeed been more my experience. On the two 

 occasions, when (as we will suppose) the male was ill-humouredly 

 pecked at, he did not give me at all the idea of being under her 

 tutelage. There was no sign of awe (save the mark !), he 

 merely flew a little way off and went on feeding, as though very 

 much unimpressed — ^just as a female Gull or Crow might have 

 done under similar circumstances. " There, then, you old cross 

 thing " — that was more the idea. 



Though, owing to the predacious naturalist, I have been 

 disappointed in not seeing the Icelandic Jer-Falcon, I to-day 

 saw his handiwork— tii^. the feathers, with the head and neck, of 

 a male Mallard, lying on the river bank, as we came here. This 

 exactly agrees with my experience of smaller findings in England 

 — Starlings, Fieldfares, Finches, &c. The head, as I suppose, is 

 in all cases pulled off before further transportal, for neither 

 here nor elsewhere have I found anything but the feathers. 

 "Whether the victim is dead before its head is thus pulled off — 

 whether this Duck was — would be all a chance. At any rate 

 he must have been immediately afterwards ; let the optimist 

 think of that, not the process. Some of the details may be 

 unlovely, but what would I not give to have seen the drama as 

 a whole — the swoop and mighty rush of pinions down the 

 darkening air, the fierce destruction and magnificent pose above 

 the prey, the scattered feathers and triumphant bearing off of 

 the plucked and decapitated body ? (Detail again, but, outside 

 humanity, I never would bowdlerise Nature.) 



June 'iSth. — Whilst watching the Phalaropes, this morning, 

 as they swam and caught Mosquitoes in the bay one flew 

 towards another, and then, as by magic, the two became a little 

 flock, which flitted about, for a minute or so, before coming 

 down on the water, again. I say by magic, because at any 

 distance these small birds are not easy to see, as they swim, so 

 that when they rise from different parts (they do not feed closely) 

 Zocl. 4ith ser., vol. XX., February, 1916. j 



