84 
NATURE NOTES. 
“Who bade the stork, Columbus-like, explore 
Lands not his own, and worlds unknown before? 
Who calls the Council, names the special day. 
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?” 
Sometimes we maj^ even see parts of these enormous hosts 
of migratory birds. Once, when I was far north at a very late 
season, and when, on our way home, we were enjoying, as we 
came southwards, the wonderful beauty of the colours of the 
foliage of Norway, as the leaves were preparing to drop, I saw 
hosts upon hosts of birds migrating, in regular armies, moving 
in one plane, up and down in their onward flight, with regular 
leaders, and seemingly complex evolutions and changes. It 
was to me a magnificent spectacle. These were, I was told, 
the solan-geese on their yearly migration to the south. The 
solan-goose was, by gannet-rocks and gannet-coves, pretty 
familiar to me as the gannet, a bird that is not a bit of a 
goose at all. But these armies probably consisted of brent 
geese migrating to the south in other array than that wherein 
they move northwards in spring. And it was very delightful 
to watch the evolutions of these enormous hosts, and these I 
could trace along the coast for a long time, as our vessel steamed 
swiftly towards the south, on the same route as the bird-hosts 
themselves. 
Among the birds that either breed in these far northern regions, 
or at least occasionally visit them, we meet with some that are 
strangely familiar to us. The wheatear and the redstart may 
be found on the fjelds near Hammerfest ; the hedgewarbler, 
and the turtle-dove farther north still ; and the very sparrow, 
both the common bird and its near relative the tree-sparrow, 
hardly distinguishable the one from the other, had, I heard, 
got up to Tromso, the capital of Finmark, where, as with 
us, it makes itself quite at home. The magpie builds its 
big nest in the fagot piles near the North Cape ; the cuckoo, 
on the heights around, entrusts her egg to the care of the rock- 
pipit or the wheatear ; the sand-martins, where they cannot find 
other nesting places, dig their well-known holes in the turf-roofs 
of the houses ; and the crows and the ravens make themselves 
nuisances by their readiness everywhere to peck at the fish that 
are hung up to dry. The willow-warbler sings his song here as 
blithely as he does in England ; and in the most northerly 
willows that these birds can anywhere find, they build a nice 
round fluffy nest, lined with the white feathers of the willow- 
grouse. 
Of the graceful little tits we find two or three species here, 
with the self-same ways as their interesting English kindred ; 
and the fly-catchers, one or two wagtails, and the familiar walk 
of the starling, as distinguished from the hop of thrush or black- 
bird, delight the eye of an English bird-lover among many birds 
that are new to him, in these far northern regions. 
To such a bird-lover, however, most of the birds that he 
