SUMMER RAMBLES ON THE SURENDAL FJELDS. Ill 
was a high rock-ridge, covered with juniper and bircli- 
scrub, from which presently a large duck sprang noisily, 
almost at Ivar’s feet. In the dim, uncertain light of 
the northern midnight I could not be sure what she 
was—in colour, blue as a wood-pigeon, and with similar 
white wing-bars—so dropped her, a female goosander. 
The nest, which contained seven eggs, nearly fresh, was 
completely “ roofed in ” beneath strong horizontal re¬ 
branches : it was formed of dead leaves of bilberry 
(Vaccinium myrtillus ), lined with dusky-grey down, 
and had an ancient and fish-like smell. A yard to one 
side lay the broken egg-shells of a previous year, 
showing that these birds return again and again to the 
same nesting-site. A third time we now returned to- 
the sanderling’s nest, again to be disappointed. We 
were, therefore, obliged to take the eggs, for our time 
was about expired, and we still had a twelve-mile tramp 
before us. 
These four eggs, which resemble those of the 
common sandpiper more than any other, I afterwards 
submitted to Mr. Howard Saunders, who reported that 
they did not correspond with the accepted type of the 
eggs of Calidris arena via, a species which, moreover* 
in the few instances in which it has been discovered 
breeding, has been found in the immediate neighbour¬ 
hood of the sea or salt water. * There remains, however, 
prominent in my mind the fact that a Sanderling 
rose from those eggs at my feet. There is no other 
Tringa known to me of that size and colour for which 
* These eggs nevertheless fairly correspond with the plate of 
sanderling’s egg, given in Seebohm’s beautiful work, “ The Eggs of 
British Birds” (1896), p. 176. 
