SUMMER RAMBLES ON THE SURENDAL FJELDS. 123 
hatched-out nest of these), an occasional ryper-cock, and 
numerous dead lemmings. These little beasts (we saw 
none alive, though many half-sunk tunnels in the snow 
I took to be theirs) had evidently been lying dead and 
frozen beneath the snow since the previous autumn. 
Crossing a high snow-clad ridge, we diverged to 
examine a nameless loch of some twenty acres that lay 
a mile or so to the right. There were several mallards, 
golden-eyes, and other ducks on this water, three of 
which, going off very wild, I could not identify. They 
pitched, however, on a smaller lake adjacent, and 
connected by a narrow channel; lying concealed here 
among the junipers, and sending Ivar round to drive, 
1 had them, two ducks and a drake; overhead, and 
selected the latter. Unluckily, it proved to be only 
an adult goosander in eclipse, and the shot turned two 
pairs of other ducks of whose identity I could not be 
sure, though they were perhaps only scaups. These 
latter ducks were apparently not breeding, nor were 
a noisy pack of quite twenty redshanks, which kept 
flying round the loch. Another small bird here quite 
puzzled me; it was black and white, apparently of the 
wagtail type, but larger and heavier, with long tail, 
the outer feathers white. I followed it some distance 
through very rough, rocky ground, under a deluge of 
rain, but failed to secure it. The whole south shore of 
this lake was occupied by a huge snow-slope, perhaps 
two hundred feet high, only broken by a few big rocks. 
Along the water’s edge were new tracks of an animal— 
perhaps an otter, though it carefully avoided the water. 
I followed these till they led into some crags, where 
a couple of terriers would have been required to further 
