92 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



A DIARY OF OKNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION MADE 

 IN ICELAND DURING JUNE AND JULY, 1912. 



By Edmund Selous. 



(Continued from p. 66.) 



June 7th. — A loud and continuous clamour of Gulls obliges 

 me to look out, when I see one of the Eagles mobbed by a crowd 

 of them. What I have said in the last entry applies now, but 

 the scene is more interesting, for the Gulls — always the same 

 species — besides being more numerous, seem more indignant. 

 Yet they appear to me to keep at a warier distance than 

 yesterday, as though fear, for Borne reason, were more in the 

 ascendant. As for the Eagle, he (for I think it is the male) 

 is not deflected, in any great degree, from his path through the 

 fields of air. There is no need that he should be ; he can go 

 where he will, for the Gulls, though they clamour and dash, 

 always give way to him. Still, he seems annoyed and put out 

 by the noisy, hostile troop. At length he comes down upon an 

 accustomed promontory, and here the Gulls stoop at him, just 

 as they used to at me in the Shetlands, when I sat down amidst 

 their breeding haunts. They, however, give him a very wide 

 berth. It is amusing to see them stretch down their legs, as 

 though to flick his head with them (for their habits, in this 

 respect, are the same as the Skuas') at a quite futile distance, 

 before sweeping up again — not nearly so near, in fact, as several 

 of them came to me. Still, some come nearer than others, and, 

 for these, the sitting Eagle has a negligent upward turn of the 

 head, with implied threat of beak, from which they mount, with 

 a sudden discretion. He sits, thus insulted, till past 7, and 

 then floats to another point, where I cannot see him, but his 

 presence is still marked by the same cries and actions of the 

 Gulls — for they are vociferous all the while. At length there 

 comes silence, with neither Gulls nor Eagles to be seen, when, 



