Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1981, Blaðsíða 135

The Collection of Wild Birds’ Eggs and Nestlings in Sweden
143
and red-breasted mergansers, but he says that no eggs were ever
taken, the boxes being intended to increase the stock of birds, which
were hunted as game (Granlund, 1958; similar reasoning in Modeer,
1933, pp. 204 f.). It may be questioned whether egg-collecting was
not practised here also in the past. Boxes for goosanders were set up
on Gotland too. There they were known as “skrakko-strunkur” or
“skrakko-stunkur” and P. A. Save gives detailed information about
them from Faro and other parts of the island (Sáve 1, no. 635, and
3, no. 139, with references). But also in the interior of the southern-
Swedish uplands, nesting-boxes have been used for divers and in
exceptional cases also for other birds (see, inter alia, Wibeck, 1927,
p. 65; nesting-box for teal (Anas crecca) at Urshult, photograph by
P. G. Vejde, Hylten-Cavalliusfóreningens arsbok 1940). There are
several reports about this practice in the tradition archives; there
is an unusual report from Árnásviken on the shore of Lake Váttern,
where such boxes were observed in 1863 (information received from
August Friberg).
Considerable attention was devoted to the care and supervision
of the nesting-boxes. They were cleaned out in the spring, before
the birds arrived, and were often singed inside and out, in order
to freshen them. In this connection and when taking the eggs, a
primitive ladder was often used, consisting of a slender tree which
had been lopped, retaining footholds at suitable intervals. Fiowever,
on this point Broman says that it “takes great skill and great effort
to climb up and down ... not without iron crampons on one’s
feet and a rope round one’s back and in one’s hands” (Broman 3,
p. 348). This is an early report of this method, which is well known
from the keeping of forest bees in eastern Europe.6 As already
indicated, a peasant could own a large number of nesting-boxes and
they were searched at regular intervals, every other day or so.
Sometimes, several female birds would settle in the same box one
after another and in this way the supply of eggs became abundant.
As the eggs were removed, each female bird laid new ones. Broman
reports “as a miracle, that, if a white stick is placed vertically in
the nest, the female will lay as long as the eggs reach as high as the
stick, especially when the box is shared by more than one pair”