BIRD LIFE IN ARCTIC NORWAY. 125 



which it differs in no other respects than in the possession of per- 

 manent white remiges and the assumption of a white garb in 

 winter. The Ptarmigan of Scandinavia is identical with our 

 Scotch bird ; its place is taken in Greenland and Iceland by a 

 closely -allied form, the Rock Ptarmigan (Lagopus rupestris). The 

 Spitsbergen Ptarmigan (L. hemileucurus) is now supposed to be 

 a Willow Grouse, in which case it is suggestive of a former much 

 greater extension northward of the continent of Europe. Perhaps 

 the most interesting to ornithologists amongst the smaller birds 

 frequenting the birch-woods is the Siberian Willow Wren (Phyl- 

 loscopus borealis), a species which the author says was unknown 

 west of Archangel before 1876. This little bird has a mono- 

 tonous note of only one syllable, " zi-zi-zi," quickly repeated, 

 with occasional short pauses of half-a-minute. The nest, which is 

 domed, but without feathers or hair, is placed at the root of a 

 tree in the densest part of the forest, and well concealed by wild 

 flowers. There is a nest with the young sitting side by side on 

 a branch in the Museum at Christiania, the only young of this 

 species hitherto exhibited. The bird has occurred in Heligoland, 

 and probably once on our east coast at Flamborough on Nov. 

 21st, 1893,* just after the great gale from the north and north- 

 east. Its winter home is in China and India, and in the Archi- 

 pelago, and as it does not appear to have been recognised on 

 migration in the southern parts of Norway, it probably follows 

 the eastern route across Russia. 



The Willow Warbler (P. trochilus) breeds as far north as the 

 Cape, and its nest is lined with a handful of the white winter- 

 feathers of the Willow Grouse. 



On desolate holms along the coast, and within the Arctic 

 fjords, breed many species of Tringa, and on the driest spots, 

 where grows a brown carpet of Empetrum nigrum, the Arctic or 

 Richardson's Skua. Sometimes the two parents differ in one 

 having a white and the other a black belly, or both may be black- 

 or white-bellied. In the down, the young are all black, but later 

 become variegated like the parents. Some islands are entirely 

 occupied by the Arctic Terns. Buffon's Skua inhabits the 



* Since I have had an opportunity of inspecting Mr. Dresser's skins of 

 the Phylloscopi, I am convinced that a Leaf-warbler watched by me at this 

 date was Phylloscopus borealis. (See 'The Naturalist,' 1894, p. 40.) 



