ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION IN ICELAND. 59 



ground must have been placed there for her by the male, who, 

 like the male Sparrow-Hawk, seems to play the part of purveyor 

 in the domestic economy of the nest. I watched the female 

 feeding for a minute or two, but in trying to focus the glasses a 

 little better, though they were well enough as they were, I lost her, 

 and could not pick her up again on the great hillside. In another 

 moment or two, however, she flew on to the nest, carrying some- 

 thing which I could not recognize, but which I thought looked 

 like a large greyish mouse. Standing upon this, she tore piece 

 after piece from it, giving most of them to the chicks, but some- 

 times swallowing one herself. She then, at 1.30, brooded the 

 chicks, so that the feeding took ten minutes. I could clearly 

 see that some portions of what the chicks received represented 

 the intestinal canal, whilst others, from their dark red — almost 

 black — colour, seemed to be the liver or some other internal 

 organ. The chicks all stretched up in the nest to receive their 

 portions, so that one of the eggs cannot have been hatched, for 

 there were five. Their coating of down seems, at this early age, 

 to cling close to their bodies, suggesting a sheared sheep. The 

 chicks did not behave themselves greedily. There was no undue 

 eagerness or snatching from one another. 



1.58 or 1.59. Female off in silence and without any warning, 

 so that I only know of her departure by looking up and finding 

 the ledge without her, a moment after she has been there. I 

 then go to a higher point up the side of the gorge, from which I 

 can look down into the nest. I cannot make out any kind of 

 remains in it, though they ought to be plain enough, if there — 

 the unhatched fifth egg lies there conspicuously (in its original 

 position apparently), the chicks being four in number. Before 

 I got to the tent, again, the bird was back, and flying round with 

 anxious twittering— there seems to be only this one cry. As 

 soon as I had entered the tent, however, from the end away from 

 her, I saw her on the ledge again. She had brought nothing in 

 with her. 



2.40. Bird off in silence, as before, but this time I see her 

 take flight. I follow her for a little, lose her for a moment, 

 then, glancing up through the window of the tent see both her and 

 the male, one above the other, pausing, as it were, in the air — 

 he uppermost, as though they had just met or were about to 



