SNIPE ON TREES 121 



At three the following^ morniiio- we shouldered our 

 guns and went on shore. We had sat up late blowing- 

 eggs, but the excitement of finding ourselves in a locality 

 where rare eggs and birds might be expected made any 

 attempt to sleep fruitless, and we decided to gratify our 

 curiosity without further delay. We shot a Siberian 

 chiffchaff singing and " chiviting " lustily amongst the 

 pines, and heard several cuckoos. The snipes were 

 drumming on the marshes, and three times we marked 

 th m perched high up on trees ; once upon a dead trunk, 

 and twice on the slender dead branches near the summit 

 of larches. These trees were at least seventy feet high. 

 To put an end to all dispute concerning their species, we 

 settled the question by dropping a common snipe with a 

 No. 4 cartridge. It was shot from the topmost twigs of 

 a lofty larch, just budding into leaf. My afternoon walk, 

 which was a long round on the marsh, resulted in very 

 little. I rose a reeve from her nest, and shot her as 

 she was silently shuffling off. The nest was a rather 

 deep hole upon a grass tussock, lined with dry grass, 

 and in it were four eggs and two feathers. A quantity 

 of yellow wagtails were running along the swampy 

 ground, and perching freely upon the birches growing on 

 the islands formed in the marsh. Their usual cry was a 

 loud nc or ns, but what seemed the call-note to the female 

 resembled the sound i-i-i-k ; the song is a low chatter 

 like that of the swallow. Ducks were constantly coming 

 and going to and from the open places on the swamp. 

 The wigeon, judging from the frequency of its cry, 

 seemed the commonest species; its loud vi-e-ee'-yjc was 

 continually to be heard. 



In the evenino we left the little villag^e of Habariki and 

 proceeded down the river. All the next day we crept 

 slowly down the mighty Petchora, a strong current in our 



