. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. Photo by J. Photo btj J. Madsen. POLAR HARE. time large fleets of ships used annually to leave the Scotch, English, and Norwegian ports to hunt the Greenland Eight Whale; but these whales have been so reduced in numbers as to be hardly worth going after, and scarcely any whalers now hunt them. The Finners and the Bottle-Nose are also taken chiefly for the blubber, as the Bottle-Nose has no whalebone, and the Finners have only very short plates in the mouth. I have left no space to speak in detail even of the commone
. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. Photo by J. Photo btj J. Madsen. POLAR HARE. time large fleets of ships used annually to leave the Scotch, English, and Norwegian ports to hunt the Greenland Eight Whale; but these whales have been so reduced in numbers as to be hardly worth going after, and scarcely any whalers now hunt them. The Finners and the Bottle-Nose are also taken chiefly for the blubber, as the Bottle-Nose has no whalebone, and the Finners have only very short plates in the mouth. I have left no space to speak in detail even of the commoner Arctic birds. Of these, probably the most familiar to travellers within the Circle is the Loon or Arctic Guillimot, of which some photographs are given at the beginning of this article. This bird, together with the Little Auk and the Dovekie, is the first to break the long silence of the dark winter months. The Loon lays a single egg on the bare ledges of rock without any attempt at a nest. Towards the end of August the young birds make their descent to the sea by taking a jump from the high cliffs, opening their wings and so skimming downwards towards the sea. In this the old birds aid them, flying with them and holding up the youngsters by the tail. I have seen as many as three old birds helping a single young one. Kittiwakes are nearly as common in some spots on the Arctic as on the British coasts. They make a nest of dry grass, and usually build near the loons, but on a tier of rocks beneath them. Concerning Gulls I need say nothing, as these have already been dealt with in Animal Life ; and it only remains for me to mention the names of the Snow Bunting, the Skua, the Snowy Owl, the Turnstone, the Knot and the Brent Goose as some of the birds more commonly met with in the Arctic Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not per
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Photo credit: © Library Book Collection / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1902
