84 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



hollows between, are bright in May with wild pansies and needle- 

 furze, and cheered by the song of innumerable Sky-Larks. 

 Here, on June 1st, 1908, I found a considerable colony of Her- 

 ring-Gulls breeding. The nests were chiefly placed on a some- 

 what flat piece of ground out of sight of the sea, and surrounded 

 by lumpy heights. Most were empty ; some ha$ one egg, and 

 there were broken egg-shells strewn about. The nests had 

 evidently been robbed systematically (the previous day had been 

 Sunday), and a man who came upon the scene resented my 

 presence among the birds. It appears that most of the ground 

 on which the Gulls nest is Government " Plantage," and this was 

 the overseer or one of his men, but he was appeased when he 

 found that I was not taking eggs. I was struck by the subdued 

 demeanour of the parent birds here, compared with the noisy 

 excitement shown at our own rock-colonies. My friend Hr. Klinge 

 tells me that the Danish Game Law allows Gulls' eggs to be 

 taken until May 25th. 



At the north-west corner of Fano is a beautiful expanse of 

 the whitest sand, without mixture of stones or vegetation, called 

 on the Danish Ordnance Map (Generalstabenskaart)* " Soren 

 Jessens Sande," but most of the north end of the island con- 

 sists of a level sward, under the sand-hills, of considerable width, 

 beyond which are gravel-like banks formed of comminuted shells, 

 past which again the muddy tide-fiats, which on the inner side 

 of Fano replace the hard sand of the open west, stretch far out 

 toward the lonely sand-cliffs of Skalling, on the other side of the 

 channel, low but steep, which are crowned by a white light- 

 house, and assume fantastic shapes in the mirage of a hot 

 afternoon. The sward (" Gronningen ") and the adjacent 

 banks and tide-flats are rich in bird-life. Lapwings, Oyster- 

 catchers, Dunlins, Eedshanks, and Einged Plovers nest on the 

 pasture, and on the flats outside are large numbers of all these 

 species, in many cases perhaps migratory flocks and parties on 

 their way further north. In 1908 I saw here also, on June 1st, 

 some thirty Bar-tailed Godwits, some quite grey, some with the 

 red nuptial plumage advanced. In various places on the north and 

 west of Fano, where the sward met the sand and became broken 



* Finely executed and very cheap maps, rather confusing in the extreme 

 abundance of very delicate detail by which they depict the land surface. 



