324 
WILD NORWAY. 
acres of water and knee-deep marsh, all trampled down 
by the paddlings of ducks with their young broods, we 
counted no less than sixteen species together. The 
water was alive with ducklings and anxious mothers 
(mallards). On a low islet was a “ stand ” of quite 
twenty ruffs; pairs of little terns plunged in the 
shallows, and the air resounded with the drumming 
of snipe and peewit and the cries of redshank, dunlin, 
and a pair of vrood-sandpipers. These latter were 
nesting hard by, though the utmost care failed to 
disclose the precise spot. During an hour, while we 
lay watching them, the following were observed: a 
marsh-harrier slowly beating across the bog, bullied 
by peewits ; a merlin, mallards, and pintails; cuckoos, 
willow-wrens, sand-martins, and swallows. We also 
noticed, among the sandhills, tracks very much like 
those of the stone-plover, a few rabbits, a hare, and 
many adders, our men being unreasonably afraid of 
these latter. 
On the shingle, nested King-Dotterels; and, further 
towards the sea, we recognized both the Lesser species 
(JEgicditis curonica) and the Kentish Plover with its pure 
white chest, obtaining specimens of all three. The Lesser 
Dotterel did not yet appear to be nesting; but on May 
17 th, after watching a Kentish Plover for some time, 
we saw her settle down on her nest by some drift weed 
on the sand, and shot her, running off. The nest, how¬ 
ever, was empty. On the shore of the fjord a pair of 
Little Gulls (Larus minutus) hovered overhead, and one 
was secured with the “ walking-stick gun ”—curiously, 
in far from complete summer-plumage, the head being 
only half black, the wings much mottled with black. 
