FOREST and lake, miles upon miles of rough, wild primæval country, hill and dale densely covered with pine forest and birch wood, broad expanses of lake dotted with well-wooded islands and boulders of rock -here we can enjoy wild nature and study wild bird-life. Here we will dwell a while, and with the aid of pencil and gun strive to lay up stores of enjoyment for many a day, after we have bidden farewell to this land of natural beauty and its hospitable inhabitants. We confess to an ardent love of Swedish landscape and to a no less ardent love of Swedish birds, and, indeed, of birds of every cline and kind. Alas! that we cannot love birds without shooting them! But do we not love the living birds all the more, and appreciate their beauty all the more, after making ourselves intimately acquainted with them at close quarters? And this we cannot do without killing some of them. Moreover, such slaughter is necessary as the only means of enabling us to learn much about the nature and idiosyncracies of the

different kinds, and every one should learn direct from nature rather than from books and museums. So we will set to work with a clear conscience to obtain possession of a few varieties, and will pit our cunning and dexterity against the natural wile and cunning of our feathered friends.

Now that the winter has passed away we must look out for new arrivals from the south, and shall greet the appearance of the strangers with joy. And yet the winter was replete with interest, although there was not much bird-life about. Was there not splendid skating on the miles of lake? the ice of which, after a single night's frost would be thick enough to bear for skating on the following morning-dark green, transparent ice, smooth as glass, with not a breath of wind to ruffle the surface, or a flake of snow to spoil the ice as it was forming. And the delights, too, of painting, regardless of cold, and with the trusty gun by our side, ever on the watch for any bird which might come in our way, while we work away and vainly endeavour to put on to canvas the view before us. Oh! those magnificent wintry sunsets, which it was always impossible to reproduce on canvas; the whole sky glowing with crimson and

gold; the miles of wet ice reflecting all the colour until the whole world quivered and melted in the golden glare; the dark purple pines bathed in the golden glow, and everything glorious and lovely beyond all powers of description, until it crimsons and purples and gradually fades away into darkness, and all is black and gloomy save for the shimmer of ice, and all is silent as death save for frequent thunderous splitting booms as the ice heaves and cracks with loud reports, expanding beneath the irresistible power of the giant frost.

And then, again, the glory of the whole world buried under deep snow! The pine forests, wonderful, grand, sublime!

The

towering pines with their branches drooping under their heavy snow-load-deep snow on the lakes, snow in the sky, snow everywhere! The snowstorm is upon us, and very quickly large silent flakes are falling, and the view is now shrouded in a white mantle; only the pines in the immediate foreground looming huge, indistinct, and ghostly, through the white mist of falling snow. The snow-cloud passes by, and again the sun shines upon the snowy expanse of forest and lake with exceeding and dazzling brilliancy, and everything glitters and flashes like crystal, causing our eyes to ache with the glare.

Of

And now we can notice a few birds. course the ubiquitous hoodie-crow is here at all seasons, perhaps the commonest bird in Sweden, and the loud, hoarse croak of the raven is heard over the lake as he prowls about in search of food. When any carrion is discerned the ravens will congregate to gether with the crows and magpies, and in a very short time what was once a hare or other animal is nothing but an empty, draggled skin and clean-picked bones.

Up on the top of the nearest pine is a flock of cross-bills, twittering happily to themselves, and looking like crimson blossoms on the snow-clad pine. So low is their twittering that one would think they were some way off, instead of being just overhead. Sociable they are too, and very active in their movements, and it is very interesting to watch them dexterously clinging to the end of a bough while they cut off a cone with their powerful bills, having succeeded in doing which they fly to a convenient branch and there proceed to extract the seeds which form their principal food. This they do by forcing the scales of the cone apart with their peculiar-shaped bills, which are admirably adapted for this purpose, while they scrape out the seed at the base of each scale with the tip of their tongue, which is long

and furnished with a sharp cutting edge. A fine old red cock is perched on the topmost shoot of the tree, and presently he utters his loud, sharp "tchip, tchip," and the whole flock fly rapidly off to another tree, uttering their loud call-note as they go, a note, by the by, which is scarcely to be distinguished from that of the greater spotted woodpecker. Presently, from the depths of the pine forest, there rings out a wild, mellow whistle, very loud and rather plaintive, repeated several times; this we know well to denote the great black woodpecker, a grand bird, much more often heard than seen, very wary and very difficult to stalk. Therefore are we all the more keen to get a specimen, and full of excitement we hurry stealthily on in the direction of that wild, mellow call. But it is very difficult to get near them, so watchful they are, and cunning, and suspicious of foes, and when once their suspicions are aroused they will often fly away to some distance, or will keep still and quiet, and will not betray their whereabouts by whistling to guide the would-be slayer to their stronghold. Several unsuccessful stalks have we had after him before this, but have never been in range except when the cover was so dense that, although not many yards off, all chance of seeing, much less of shooting our prey, was utterly lost. But now we view him, though out of gunshot, high up a goodly pine. He moves not, but seemingly lazy and indifferent taps listlessly at the trunk, while his whistle is much more subdued. Very black he looks against the snow-clad pine while his crimson crown flashes in the sun, proclaiming him even at this distance a cock bird, the hen having only a small crimson patch at the back of the head. Now he puts his head down to one side while he scratches it vigorously with his foot. Suddenly he is off uttering an extraordinary cry, which is only heard when he is on the wing, and is very harsh and grating, like the syllable "kra, kra, kra," repeated several times, and repeated so rapidly as almost to sound like one continuous note. This cry sounds like a death-knell to our hopes; but presently we are reassured by again hearing the wildlysweet whistle which tells us that he has again settled. And so we keep stalking him until he is marked down in a patch of young pines and junipers very close together, and where we hope to have better success. And soon we are at pretty close quarters, although we only catch an occasional glimpse of his black form as he flies amongst the thick cover. Α sudden whirring of wings brings our gun involuntarily to our shoulder, and we cover

a fine old blackcock stealing across a little bit of open ground, his glossy plumage glinting in the sun; but the woodpecker has superior charms, and the blackcock is allowed to go in peace. A hurricane of blows on some rotten stump betokens the near proximity of the woodpecker, and soon we view him; but the next instant, with a clumsy hop, he has vanished away, only to reappear, however, in a few seconds more. His hammer-shaped head is rapidly moving as with showers of blows he hammers away at the stump. His cream-coloured eye is plainly discernible, and his beak, yellow as to the base, looks immense. Without further loss of time the death-warrant has gone forth, and the next instant there is a harsh grating cry, and through the smoke our woodpecker is seen careering wildly about in the air. He has evidently got it in his head, but to make sure, he is dropped with the second barrel, and one of the ambitions of the time is a verity.

Besides the great black woodpecker, the green, great and lesser spotted, and the whitebacked woodpecker, stay here for the winter, but their forces are most probably augmented in the spring from others which come up from the south, as they are infinitely more numerous in the spring than in the winter-time. The white-backed woodpecker is not to be distinguished from the great spotted one at a little distance, and its cry is exactly the same, but when in hand the difference is very apparent, the former bird being marked almost like the lesser spotted woodpecker, except that the red is continued further to the back of the head, the white back is not so barred with black, and the feathers under the tail are of a delicate salmon-colour. In size it is rather superior to the greater spotted, and the bill is longer and sharper.

Perhaps the most beautiful of all the European birds is the waxwing, which comes south in the winter time from its northern home. They are common wherever there are mountain-ash trees, for the berries of which they have a great liking. A more beautiful sight can scarcely be imagined than a flock of fifty or sixty of these lovely little birds, feeding on the berries of a snowcovered mountain-ash. They are so tame as to allow of a very near approach, and all their movements can be observed with ease, and very graceful they are as they cling in every position to the twigs to get at the scarlet berries, the raising and depressing at will of their long crest being particularly noticeable. They incessantly utter their

note, a weak, high-pitched, tremulous kind of a twitter, "cir-r-r-r-r-r," which although feeble, can be heard some distance off, and betrays the whereabouts of the flock. They are very erratic in their movements and make long flights and wheel about for some time, perhaps after all to alight on the very tree from which they started. They settle at the tops of the trees in very close order, and several can be killed with one charge of dust shot. Unless care is taken to fill the throat and nostrils with cotton wool as soon as shot, there is great

danger of their beauty being utterly spoilt by a dirty liquid which they exude from their throats, and which makes sad havoc of their delicate plumage.

Of course in the winter there are plenty of fieldfares, missel-thrushes, magpies, yellowhammers, siskins, redpolls, mountain-finches, &c. But it is now spring time; the winter has gone, all the ice is broken up, and all the world is gay and full of hope and promise, with budding leaves and opening blossoms, long absent birds returning, and sunshine bathing everything in its genial rays. Everything seems to enjoy life to the very full in

its own particular way, even to the lizards and spiders basking on the dead leaves which strew the ground. The lakes are all alive with ducks, and goosanders and crested grebes, and graceful gulls wandering restlessly about screaming incessantly. Amongst the alders and birch by the margin of the lake are chaffinches, willow-wrens, and pied flycatchers innumerable, all singing merrily amidst the golden-green budding leaves, while the bees among the sallow catkins are humming joyously. Larks are singing in the heavens and martins swarm, catching their insect prey. In the roughly cultivated fields between the

pines are hopping merrily tits of every kind great, blue, long-tailed, cole, marsh and crested, and the tiny gold-crest with its fiery poll.

Presently an excited fluttering mob of these small fry proclaim the presence of an unwonted visitor, and on close examination we discover a grave old wood-owl, sitting upright against the trunk about half way up a fir tree, looking very sulky and much annoyed at having his sleep disturbed by this horde of small birds. We ruthlessly take the tits' part, and shy up a stick at the old owl who silently takes to wing, and diving down on broad wings close to the ground

tracts of forest are wheatears, their pure white tail-covert showing dazzlingly conspicuous as they fly a little further off as we pass on our way to the forest. Noisy flocks of jackdaws are feeding here in the open, ever and again some of them breaking from the ranks and flying off to a neighbouring wood of oak and beech, where they make for their nesting trees, and fly in and out of the holes with excited chatterings. Among the oaks jays are screaming, ringdoves cooing, and stockdoves also with their hoarser notes. In the forest the blackcock is crooning all day, while the missel-thrushes are joyously shouting their wild sweet song. About the

disappears amongst the trees, whereat the titmice rejoice greatly.

Meanwhile woodpeckers are getting very noisy, and seem to enjoy life and the balmy spring air as they sit on the topmost twigs of the trees, basking in the warm sun. They are at peace with themselves and, strange to say, with all mankind, and we if so minded could shoot any amount of them without difficulty. But we forbear. Their laughing "gleuk, gleuk, gleuk," is a joyous note, and seems to be shared in common by them all, though it is loudest in the great black species, while in the lesser spotted it almost approaches the note of the wryneck, that is to

say a note very similar to that of a young kestrel. These lesser spotted woodpeckers are particularly tame, and one can approach within a few yards as they sit still on a dead branch, every now and then drumming on the branch with rapidly-repeated blows of their beak. Very handsome they are, too, with their red crowns and black and white barred plumage. This drumming on dead. boughs can be distinctly heard at a great distance. On still dull days it sounds most unearthly as it reverberates through the sombre depths of the wood. The bird sits on a dead bough and delivers such rapidly repeated blows with its bill that the eye cannot follow the motion of the bird's head, while the noise produced sounds like one long drawnout continuous note. This drumming is

only heard in the spring, and we used to wonder at the meaning of it. At first we thought that its object was to frighten their insect prey out of their woody strongholds, but having watched the birds at close quarters, sitting still for half an hour at a time drumming away at intervals and not seeming to feed at all, we were forced to abandon this theory altogether, nor could we substitute any other in its place, unless indeed the sound may be some sort of signal to their mates, perhaps of assurance, that nothing is happening to disturb the quiet which all good birds deserve to enjoy.

High above the forest soars a sparrowhawk, with motionless wings and wide-opened tail, and the fieldfares, which are building in a small colony in some neighbouring birch and fir-trees, are in a great flutter at the unwelcome sight. One may sometimes see an immense edition of the sparrow-hawk in the shape of a goshawk, a noble savage, bold, fierce, and relentless, at war with all the world, strong enough-and ready enough too-to tackle even the lordly capercailzie. Very often he is mobbed by a rabble of shrill cawing hoodie crows, and at odd times we have seen as many as fifty in full cry after