200 Mr. H. J. Pearson on Birds 



26. Phalaropus hyperboreus. 



Red-necked Phalaropes were common on all the marsliea 

 of Waigats. Three clutches of eggs — four, three, and four 

 respectively — were found between June 30th and July 5th ; 

 all in wet positions, and in one case I stood in nine inches 

 of water to photograph the eggs, the nest being in coarse 

 grass over the water. Several young in down were also 

 secured. The only bird shot from the nest proved to be a 

 male. The species was common on Dolgoi Island. 



27. TriNGA ALPINA. 



Dunlins were sparsely but evenly distributed over all the 

 parts of Waigats we visited, and generally had young ; a 

 clutch of four eggs, half incubated, was taken on July 8th. 



A bird of the year was shot at Habarova, July 17th ; and 

 several pairs of old birds were seen on Dolgoi Island during 

 our short visit there. 



This species is not at all gregarious during the breeding- 

 season ; even in Iceland, to which thousands resort every 

 summer, we rarely found more than one pair in a marsh. 



28. Tringa minuta. 



It would be far easier to write a paper than a paragraph 

 on the Little Stint, so charming is this bird in all its ways, 

 and so entirely without fear of man. Little Stints were 

 the commonest species on Waigats after the Snow-Bunting, 

 and especially numerous at the heads of Dolga Bay and 

 other inlets of the sea ; but they did not confine themselves 

 to the neighbourhood of the shore, a number breeding round 

 the lakes, two to three miles inland. They were also 

 nesting near Habarova, on Dolgoi Island, and at Belootchia 

 Bay, Novaya Zemlya. At the last place, on our showing 

 some young ones to Taitiana, our Samoyed hostess of 1895, 

 she explained that the Samoyed dogs eat most of the young 

 of this and other species before they can fly. There are 

 generally forty to sixty dogs at a camp ; and as the poor 

 brutes are often half starved, they range over the country 

 for miles, clearing off everything, from Little Stints upwards. 



