336 THE MARCH-PAST OF THE MIGRANTS 



browed willow-warbler {Phylloscopus siiperciliostis, Gm.), 

 as I expected. There was quite a little party of these 

 diminutive creatures, and they were so tame after their 

 long journey that I watched them for a long time hopping 

 from twig to twig, diligently searching for food. I was often 

 within four feet of one of them, and could distinctly see its 

 white eye-stripe and the two pale bars across its wing. 



My attention was called away from these charming 

 little warblers by hearing a still more plaintive call-note, 

 which proceeded from a very nearly allied species almost 

 as small — the Siberian chiffchaff. During the day I 

 repeatedly heard the song — if song it may be called — 

 of this little black-legged willow-warbler, which I had 

 learned to recognise in a moment by hearing it so often 

 in the valley of the Petchora. I soon put its identity 

 beyond question by shooting a fine male, and discovered 

 that it had arrived in considerable numbers, as its note 

 was often heard during the day, but generally from some 

 pine-tree which was for the moment inaccessible, being 

 surrounded by snow too soft to bear my weight, even on 

 snow-shoes, and too deep to struggle through with any 

 chance of a successful pursuit. But interesting as the 

 arrival of these two rare warblers was to me, having 

 made this group my special study, I was even more 

 delighted to hear the unmistakable song of our common 

 European willow-warbler, a bird I had never dreamt of 

 meeting so far east. I shot a pair, and thus satisfactorily 

 demonstrated that some of our ornitholoo-ical books have 

 been wrong in giving the Ural range as the eastern limit 

 of this well-known species during the breeding season. 

 It seems too bad to shoot these charming little birds, but 

 as the " Old Bushman " says, what is kit is history, and 

 what is missed is mystery. My object was to study 

 natural history, and one of the charms of the pursuit is to 



