130 OUR VOYAGE TO THE DELTA 



approach found them to be a pile of dirty blocks of 

 ice. 



We arrived at Pustozersk at midnight on June i8, 

 and spent the night shooting. The country was a sort 

 of rolling prairie, rising here and there into dry moorland, 

 on which grew birches, junipers, and a few pines. The 

 lower land remained a willow-swamp. Among the sand- 

 hills we found a couple of terns' nests and one of the 

 Terek sandpiper. Plenty of Temminck's stints were 

 about, but we failed to find any nests. We shot a couple 

 of sand-martins preparing to build. In a walk that I 

 took on the dry moorland I stalked a couple of willow- 

 grouse sitting upon a birch-tree, very conspicuous objects 

 for a mile around. I also rose a shore-lark from its nest, 

 in which I found four young birds, and secured a golden 

 plover, one of whose axillary feathers was blotched with 

 brown. In this part of the moor the yellow-headed 

 wagtails abounded. Down in the marshy ground I shot 

 a ruff, and saw several others, besides a number of red- 

 necked phalaropes ; but of all the birds the most interest- 

 ing were the pipits. Our new pipit was here by no means 

 uncommon ; two or three would sometimes be singing 

 together. We secured two more specimens, one of 

 which must have been trilling its roundelay up in the air 

 for nearly an hour before we were able to shoot it. These 

 pipits poured their song indifferently from the sky, or 

 perching on a bough, or down upon the ground. The 

 red-throated pipit we also found settling freely in trees. 

 In the swampy ground we saw many sedge- warblers, 

 fieldfares, and redwings, and one or two blue-throats. 

 The next night we again spent shooting in a willow- 

 covered island just opposite Kuya. We had grown very 

 weary of these islands, and somewhat disappointed in the 

 result of our ornithological experience of the delta. We 



