58 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



A DIARY OF ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION MADE 

 IN ICELAND DURING JUNE AND JULY, 1912. 



By Edmund Selous. 



(Continued from vol. xviii. (1914), p. 225.) 



June 2,2nd. — (I cannot now account for the intervening days.) 

 I have been alone in my tent with the Merlins again, from a 

 little after midday when it was first pitched. There are now 

 young in the nest, and the female bird sits covering them, as 

 though she were still incubating, but raised a little higher. At 

 about 12.50 p.m. there is the twittering call of the male, and the 

 female flies off. I hear one or both of them crying in the near 

 neighbourhood of the nest, and, at a minute or two before 1, 

 the female returns, but I cannot make out that she brings 

 anything with her, or feeds the young. She continues to brood 

 them merely, and, very shortly, flies off again, and, through the 

 window of my tent, I am now able to follow her. She makes a 

 sweep down the mountain side, then back again, and perches on 

 a salient stone. From this, she in a moment flies down the 

 mountain again, and circles over the flat lands below, as though 

 with a view to seize prey. Nothing comes of this, however, and, 

 in another minute or so — at about 1.15 — she returns, unladen, 

 to the nest, and once more broods her young ; the latter look 

 very small, and as though they had not long been hatched. 

 This sortie seemed to be quite on the hen bird's own account — 

 there was no sign of the male — yet she has not caught anything 

 in it, either for herself or the young. At 1.20 p.m. she sweeps 

 suddenly down from the ledge, without any cry or warning. 

 Then, sweeping up again, over the side of the gorge, she perches 

 on a jagged piece of brown stone, the mountain being strewn 

 with these. I hear a twittering, but it does not appear to pro- 

 ceed from her, and, the next instant, she jumps from the stone 

 and seizes something quite near it, upon the ground. Then, 

 flying with this to another stone, she begins to devour it. 

 Clearly then this cry (which was repeated once or twice) came 

 from the male, or, at least, which is more essential, he had come, 

 for the female simply swept from the nest to the stone, and had 

 nothing when she alighted upon it. What she seized on the 



