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yellow, and wild goose, near

Guildford, 4118

garganey, at the Land's End, Warbler, blackcap, variation in the

3953

curiously situated nests of, 4076

Tortoise, an old, 4242

"Transactions of the Norfolk and

Norwich Naturalists' Society,' 4097

Tringa maritima, 3809

Tumbler, shortfaced, curious malfor-
mation in the mandibles of a, 3998
Turnstone, 3942, 4062, 4251
Turtle, 3878; in Mount's Bay, 4242

Uria Brunnichi, 3817

Variety of linnet, 3912; of house spar-
row, 3914; of the common rat,
3996; of the water rat, 4074; of
the lobster, 4080

Varieties of the swallow, 3862, 4238

song of, 4075

bluethroated, at Chatteris,

Cambridgeshire, 3953

Dartford, in Suffolk, 3914

garden (?), 3864

Warblers, 4066; British, spring migra-
tion of, 4032

Weasel, accident to a, 4194

Wheatear, 3868, 4063, 4132

Whiff and lumpsucker off the Cornish

coast, 4037

Whimbrel, 4060, 4132, 4133

Wigeon remaining in summer, 3860;
in Somersetshire, 3870; in North
Lincolnshire, 3943
Wild-fowl, abundance of, 3825; on
the Lincolnshire coast, 3942
Woodcock, early, 3825

white, in Ireland, 3915
Woodcocks, 3947; in the Scilly Isles,
4260

Woodpecker, greater spotted, near

Farnham, 4077; and starlings, id.;

and barn owl, food of, 4117

green, 4063

lesser spotted, at In-

stow, 4156

Wren, willow, autumnal migration of,
4259

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THE ZOOLOGIST

FOR

1874.

Notes on the Fauna of Spitsbergen.
By the Rev. A. E. EATON, M.A., Memb. Ent. Soc. Lond.

(Continued from Zool. S. S. 3772.)

BIRDS.

Re-addition to the Fauna:-Lesser redpoll (Linota linaria). Desiderata obtained: - Pomarine skua (Stercorarius pomatorhinus), longtailed skua (S. longicauda), and brent goose (Bernicla leucopsis).

Plectrophanes nivalis (Snow Bunting).-In the former part of this paper I have mentioned our meeting with flights of snow buntings, towards the end of May, flying westward, when we were at the Western Ice. There was a small flock of them on the east side of King's Bay on the 8th of June, when the land was mostly covered with snow, flitting from patch to patch of bare ground in search of food. Three days later we found them in pairs at Norway Islands, and in full song. On the 29th of June I found a nest at Walden Island containing three blind young. My guard and I (for there being a suspicion of bears about the place, the captain had insisted upon my being attended like a convict by a man with a loaded rifle) saw the old birds flying about a crevice in a cliff behind a large slab of rock. He at first pronounced it inaccessible, for there was no ledge for one's feet nearer than the base of the cliff, some yards below. By grasping the top of the slab I was able, however, to swing myself hand over hand out to where the old birds had entered, though not having anything to stand upon when I got there I could not examine the nest or do more than look hastily at it. A very old nest was in the same

SECOND SERIES-VOL. IX.

B

crevice near the new one. We again met with flocks of buntings towards the end of August at North Cape and Phipps's Island. A single bird flew past us southwards on the 16th of September, when we were some twenty-nine miles S.W. by W. magnetic of Hope Island. This was not the last we saw of them, for during a lucid interval in sea-sickness I noticed one flying round the ship in lat. 61°, about forty miles N.E. by N. of Shetland.

Linota linaria, L. (Redpoll).—"On our approach to Spitsbergen, several of this species alighted on different parts of the ship, and were so wearied apparently by being on the wing, though our distance from the land was not above ten miles, that they allowed themselves to be taken alive. How this little creature subsists, and why a bird of such apparent delicacy should resort to such a barren and gelid country, are questions of some curiosity and difficulty. It must be migratory," &c. (Scoresby, Arct. Reg. i. 537). Nobody but Scoresby having claimed to have found a redpoll in Spitsbergen, the statements cited above have been supposed by general consent to apply to the snow bunting. And yet when we found a redpoll in lat. 75° 13′ N. at the Western Ice, as has been previously stated, we began to suspect that Scoresby after all might be correct in his observations. In the evening of the Sixth Sunday after Trinity, I went ashore in Wiide Bay with James Kidd. He took my gun, as I wanted some ptarmigan, and we thought we might fall in with deer. On landing we first worked eastward, not far from the shore, where patches of moss and willow encouraged us to look for plants and insects; but we found little besides a few common things and some spiders. So we gradually took ground to the left, ascending the slope of the hills, and passing by a lakelet, made our way into the next valley. There we saw two pairs of long-tailed skuas, the first we had met with in the country. Kidd went after them, but they flew away out of sight up the opposite mountain. We then proceeded along the foot of the western side of the valley until it met a range of lofty cliffs too steep to be ascended, which extended to and beside the inevitable glacier a little further on, and helped to confine it. A slope of broken rocks was above us, up which we scrambled until we reached the higher ground again, frequently pausing in our ascent, of course to admire the view. Ptarmigan were the objects of our quest, and we presently came upon a hen with her brood. We wanted the old cock; and as soon as Kidd had caught

one of the chicks as a lure, down he flew from the hill above and alighted close to us in a state of great excitement. Kidd was getting ready to shoot him, when a redpoll passed by and settled on a rock near at hand. Before I could get within range of it, off it flew and vanished out of sight; so I returned to our ptarmigan and shot the cock. The widow and family were not wanted; they walked slowly away. We had just found another cock, and were walking up to it when two deer came into view below us. I signalled their approach to Kidd, and he made his way to where I was standing. They were on the move, and out of range, to the windward of us. For some minutes we crouched behind a rock watching them as they advanced, feeding here and there amongst the rocks until they passed over the brow of the slope into the valley we had lately left. Kidd went after them, but failing to see them again, he relieved his feelings by shooting at two spinster ptarmigan which were sitting side by side upon a rock above him. When he brought them up to me I showed him a cock, which he failed to secure. In going after it, however, he found Cystopteris fragilis growing amongst loose stones at the foot of the cliff. Re-directing him to where the ptarmigan was patiently waiting to be shot at again, I hastened to examine the fern in situ. On my I heard a redpoll singing, and shouted to him the intelligence. The ptarmigan would wait any length of time, so he made at once for the songster. Presently it flew down from the cliff and alighted in the valley beneath, where he very soon shot it and placed it in my hands. Resuming the ptarmigan hunt he walked towards the cliffs, where it was waiting for him still, whilst I returned to my slope to search for plants. In the course of a few minutes he came back, not with the ptarmigan (he could not find it), but with Campanula uniflora, and I meanwhile had found a Gentiana, and had seen an Eudorea new to the country. In going after my net to catch the moth, I flushed the long-sought-for ptarmigan. Pursued by the relentless engineer for a quarter of a mile down the valley, it received another charge of No. 8, with little damage, and then started to fly back again to me. It alighted at the foot of the slope; and stood there, stretching out its neck from behind a stone, and blinking its eyes at me. I thought it must be feeble through having been struck with two charges of shot; so after pelting its head with a tolerable number of rocks, which I could see and hear strike it, and the bird had tumbled over once or twice, I tried to

way

catch him with my ring-net. But though he was prepared to submit to be stoned, and would probably have held out his neck for an indefinite length of time, to be netted alive with a common fly-net was an indignity with which he really could not put up. When last seen he was flying with undiminished vigour over the shoulder of a mountain no one knows how far away. As Kidd remarked, "It was a very curious-like animal." We returned to the 'Diana' after that. Apparently redpolls are not uncommon in that part of Wiide Bay. Our men saw five or six on the uplands in the same neighbourhood. They also found a nest upon the ground, containing five eggs, blue spotted with reddish, which were possibly redpoll's, but may have been snow bunting's. As these were hard set they did not bring them to me. The crop of the example shot by Kidd was full of small seeds.

Nyclea nivea (Snowy Owl).—Captain Walker, of the 'Samson,' fired at a snowy owl, with a rifle on the 18th of August, in a valley running out of Green Harbour. It was one of the finest he had ever seen. As he was after deer at the time, and was very familiar with this species of birds in the Straits, he did not think it worth his while to make any further effort to secure it.

Lagopus hemileucrurus, Gould (Ptarmigan).-Leaving to Prof. Newton all critical remarks upon the speciality of the Spitsbergen ptarmigan, I will give here a resumé of our more general observations. The birds were not scarce in King's Bay. Messrs. Potter and Chermside killed several brace there at the end of May. The cocks were yet in their winter plumage, but all the hens were brown. When do these become white? In July we found in Wiide Bay plenty of ptarmigan, the cocks presenting different stages of advancement towards the completion of the moult. But it was not until August that I met with a cock in his full summer dress. It was low down in the cliffs in Lomme Bay, close to the sea, and I knocked him over with a stone. He was just as stupid as the bird chased by Kidd in Wiide Bay, standing in the same way within three or four yards of me, stretching out his neck and blinking his eyes, moving only now and then a few steps at a time, until a stone struck him. Then being not much hurt (they are such tough birds) he began to walk slowly away, and allowed me to throw at him again, this time with more success. Their call resembles that of a reindeer; they utter also a glucking noise when they are surprised or are with their brood. They are usually found

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