WILD-LIFE IN FOREST AND FJELD. 
283 
fire a shot or two to attract attention to the bonfire— 
the signal to send a boat for us. Hard by, a Hawk-Owl 
perched about six feet below the peak of a pine. The 
bullet cut away the whole six-foot spike from just 
above the owl’s head. He circled round, swearing at 
large, and perched again on the broken spike, where I 
missed him a second time, and pulled homewards duly 
humiliated. 
The owl-tribe are thoroughly characteristic of the 
northern forests. Around his house at Lovsjoli, Bengt 
had persuaded a few perches of oats to grow, and 
over this stubble, as each daylight waned, there flew 
and flickered at least a score of owls, great and small, at 
our very door. They were mostly of the Short-eared 
and Tawny species, but there also appeared to be 
Long-eared as well. In the forests the hawk-owl pre¬ 
dominated in numbers, though always solitary, with 
Tengnndm’s owl second, and the tiny Sparrow-Owl 
(Glaucidimn passerinum ) rarest—at least that was the 
order of precedence in which we observed them. All 
these three at times showed an inclination to follow 
the hunter, often sailing around his head within a 
few yards, the Sparrow-Owl invariably perching on the 
very topmost spike of a young pine. The Eagle-Owl 
appeared less common in the highland forests than in 
the regions nearer the coast, while the Snowy-Owl even 
in winter confines his operations to the high snow-fjeld 
—and the arctic hares. The reason for these swarming 
owls and other birds of prey is found in the hordes of 
small rodents that infest both forest and fell. Besides 
the lemmings, voles, rats and mice of various colours,, 
sorts, and sizes, amphibious and terrestrial, abound in 
