A WALK ACROSS LAPLAND.
By H.C. Playne and A.F.R. Wollaston.[1]
Once more again this year the 1st of August saw us on our way northwards, wishing indeed that we could have started three months earlier, but ready to make the most of the only time at our disposal. As we travelled over a considerable extent of country, it will be better not to give a list of all the species of birds we met with, but to write some account of what seemed to us of most interest.
From Trondhjem we went to Hammerfest, through fjords which abound in bird-life; but the deck of a steamer is not a good point of observation, for one is only able to have a passing glimpse of a bird before it is out of sight. Richardson's Skua, Stercorarius crepidatus, was abundant, and we had excellent views of many a chase which ended in an unfortunate Tern giving up its prey. Of Buffon's Skua, S. parasiticus, with its long tail, we only saw one. We spent a short time on shore at Hammerfest between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m., and though the days of the midnight sun were past, we saw two Dippers, Cinclus aquaticus, playing about the stones of a stream at 12.30 a.m. In the afternoon of the same day we landed at the head of the Alten fjord, and began our walk, which was to bring us over the watershed into Finland, and to the northern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia.
Bramblings, Fringilla montifringilla, were very numerous among the birch trees, and we could nearly always hear the callnote of Parus borealis. This bird has also a song quite unlike any song of P. palustris that we had ever heard. The Lapp Tit, P. cinctus, was often with his cousin, but he seemed a much more silent bird. These were the only Paridæ that we met with until we reached Tervola, half-way between Rovaniemi and Tornea, where a Great Tit, P. major, was seen searching a window-frame for insects. On a small lake not far from Alten was a Brent Goose, Bernicla brenta, with five young birds.
- ↑ See: remark in The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898), issue 679, January, p. 25–26 (Wikisource-ed.)
