AN ORNITHOLOGICAL TOUR IN NORWAY. 425 



wary bird, and very quiet in its ways in the breeding season, except 

 when it has young hatched. 



T. pilaris. — Occasional pairs were to be found in the fir forests, 

 and we came across one fairly large colony some way up the hill- 

 side, where there were a good many young firs, while a clearing 

 close at hand and a rill of water afforded a convenient feeding 

 ground. We came upon the colony in the evening of June 4th, 

 and found the birds very noisy, some of them fairly screaming. 

 They were still building, and we saw a pair outside the forest 

 picking up mud. Two or three nests, possibly old ones, were 

 about fifteen feet from the ground in slender firs. A completed 

 nest, in a young fir not quite six feet from the ground, was very 

 bulky, with thick walls of dead grass and dirty bog-moss, with a 

 lining of mud, still damp, and a very thick inner lining of dead 

 grass. Another half-finished nest, of the same outer materials, 

 was not more than five feet from the ground in the top of a broken 

 birch. The song of the Fieldfare is very rarely heard, at this 

 season, at all events ; I only heard it two or three times, and it 

 then consisted of two or three whistling notes, poor in quality, 

 followed by some low, harsh, squeaky, running notes. Near 

 Trondhjem we saw an occasional pair. On the way to the 

 Lerfossen falls a pair attacked and drove off a Grey Crow with 

 angry cries, striking at it again and again. I sometimes saw a pair 

 of Fieldfares feeding out in the little pastures outside the woods. 

 Hewitson wrote: — " Our attention was attracted by the harsh 

 cries of several birds, which we at first supposed must be Shrikes, 

 but which afterwards proved to be Fieldfares, anxiously watching 

 over their newly established dwellings." But I do not think that 

 anybody else who knew the Fieldfare in winter would make such 

 a mistake for a moment. It was this remark of Hewitson's which 

 inclined me to doubt the correctness of his estimation of the song 

 of the Icterine Warbler. 



T. torquatas. — At a height of perhaps 600 feet above Tonset, 

 where the firs had given place to the birch, we saw a pair and an 

 odd male. This bird was singing from the top of an outlying fir. 

 The song was a clear, sweet, wild whistle : — " way way way way" 

 or " way-tay way-tay way-tay," followed by two or three stifled, 

 confused, grating notes. 



Saxicola cenanthe. — Several at Tonset. Some were pairing. 



Pratincola rabetra. — A good many at Tonset and Trondhjem. 



