the Birds of the Lower Petchora. 4A7 



ffiDEMIA NIGRA (L.) . 



The first Common Scoter was identified as it flew close past 

 the steamer at Ust Zylraa on the 1st June. Afterwards, at vari- 

 ous localities, Common Scoters were seen by us as we floated 

 down stream; and they were common on the tundra as far north 

 as Stanavoialachta, especially among the lakes near Vassilkova 

 and Yooshina, and at Stanavoilachta, where the tundra has 

 more the appearance of a rolling prairie than elsewhere. At 

 Yooshina, on the south side of the river of that name, some 

 parts of the tundra are very beautiful, being a rolling moor, 

 covered on the top with reindeer -moss and carices, and quan- 

 tities of crow-berries, and with thickets of low scrub-willow 

 and birch in the hollows and beside the numerous little tarns 

 and pools. Small streams of beautifully clear water, perhaps 

 not more than a foot or two wide, and the same or more in 

 depth, with gravelly or sandy bottom, unite a chain of these 

 lakes, by the sides of which are often curiously shaped mounds, 

 like old ant-hills, covered with dried leaves of the arctic 

 bramble {Rtibus arcticus), and bearing still a plentiful supply 

 of last year's cranberries. By the side of one of these little 

 runlets of water, in an opening in the scrub, we found quite 

 a little forest of aureola-plant [Veratrum album) (Ibis, 1873, 

 p. 62), and also quantities of marsh -marigold, golden saxi- 

 frage, and a dwarf geranium. Broad-leaved sorrel, too, in 

 the absence of all vegetable food, was as refreshing to the 

 palate as to the eye. 



On one of the lakes we saw assembled the following wild- 

 fowl : — two male Scaups, two pairs of Long-tailed Ducks, a 

 pair of Bean-Geese, a pair of Widgeon, a Black-throated 

 Diver, and a Bed-throated Diver, a Red-breasted Merganser 

 (the first we had seen), and several Red-necked Phalaropes. 

 At the time of our visit to the Golaievskai banks, vast num- 

 bers of Black Scoters were congregated along the shore and 

 in the water on the inside of the island called No. 3 in the 

 Admiralty Chart. When we approached they all rose and 

 flew away in a body to the southward. As has already been 

 remarked, large flocks of these or other Ducks seen at a dis- 

 tance on a calm glassy sea, and with refraction busily at 



