MR. J. H. GURNEY’S ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM NORWAY. 371 
The name “ Fjeld-ripa ” is a little confusing to a stranger, for it 
is sometimes applied to the Willow Grouse, and sometimes to the 
Ptarmigan (Larjopus mutus), which are only met with in the com- 
pany of Snow Huntings, at a height of G000 feet. I neither saw 
nor heard anything of the Hazel Grouse ( Bonasa betulina), which is 
comparatively rare ; it is probably from much further east that the 
London supply of this delicacy comes. 
Scaup and Golden Eye are shot sometimes, but the Mallard 
is less numerous than it used to be. II. used to get a good many 
Teal, but I only saw two. Herring Gulls come up the valley 
occasionally, and we pursued one fine old Cormorant with no more 
dangerous weapons than our fishing-rods. On September 5th 
11. saw some lled-breasted Mergansers at the mouth of the valley, 
and on the 6th, a flock of seventeen at Naes. They must breed, as 
some years ago he sent to England a nestling about one-third grown. 
The only other specially interesting birds to be mentioned were 
the IJlack-throated Divers on the lake ; the young already as large 
and quite as strong on the wing as their parents. 'They also breed 
here. The Red-throated Diver has been shot once, if not oftener, 
but not last year, and it is not impossible that Cohjmbu x ad am si 
maybe someday met with. When Mr. Eustace Gurney was at this 
place, he met with Cranes, but no such good luck happened to our 
party. 
There is one thing which must strike any one who goes to 
Norway — the absence of birds in the forests, but to an English- 
man it seems a paucity of individuals rather than of species ; 
and the same lack of bird-life is noticeable in many other parts of 
Europe, where there are large tracts of forest land uninhabited by 
man, which offer but little food to bird-life. The same thing 
may bo seen on a smaller scale in our own New Forest and 
among the timber-clad hills of The Yar in France. In 1891, 
Professor Collett only put the number of species of Norwegian 
birds at 278, a low figure compared with the British avifauna, 
considered by Mr. Howard Saunders to stand at 384. 
