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A DIARY OF ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION MADE 

 IN ICELAND DURING JUNE AND JULY, 1912. 



By Edmund Selous. 



(Continued from p. 66.) 



June 24th. — A minute or two before 6.30 a.m. the female 

 bird is on the nest. I do not know how long before that. Just 

 afterwards I hear the cry of the male, and at 6.30, when I get to 

 the entrance of the tent, again, the nest (except for the chicks) 

 is empty. Before 6.35 the bird returns and makes a little 

 rejoicing flight about the home-rock, ere alighting on the ledge. 

 She appears then to be carrying nothing, but the instant she 

 alights I see that she holds a mass of flesh in her left claw. She 

 then feeds the chicks, and, at 6.40, broods them. Before doing 

 so, however, and whilst not yet in her accustomed position, with 

 reference to the chicks, upon the nest, she goes through those 

 peculiar movements which I have so often before observed her 

 to make, hunching up her back, bending down the head and 

 tail, and making some sharp and, as it were, spasmodic motions 

 with the latter, that is to say with all that part of the body to 

 which the word tail might be applied, not the rectrices only. 

 These movements, therefore, can stand in no special relation 

 either to the eggs or young, but have to be explained inde- 

 pendently of either. The fragmentary nature of what the bird 

 this time brought back to the nest was clearly apparent. It 

 looked as though she had clawed out the whole of the contents 

 of the visceral cavity, and gripped them together in a bunch. 

 The long intestinal canal was the most apparent portion. It 

 hung down in several places — I suppose in loops, but I could 

 see one free end. I have before, during the feeding of the chicks, 

 noticed its whiteness, but did not so much remark it this time. 

 Were the young always fed in this way it would account for 

 there being no remains of such repasts in the nest, for in another 



