88 Hall, The Eastern PalcparcHca and Australia. \_-iJ^"oc\. 



they have gone north. Currants, raspberries, strawberries, bil- 

 berries, and gooseberries form a portion of their food. Nuts of 

 the cedar are the food of the Finches and dessert of the people. 

 The sight of the edelweiss was good enough for me, supported by 

 great fields of the equisitine horse-tails. Lower down the river 

 the Common Sandpiper was nesting in this latter cover. 

 Innumerable squirrels and a white hare were playing about, and 

 a brown bear was enjoying the ground that a polar bear would 

 later occupy in his wanderings. All migratory birds would then 

 be gone, just now the Tunguse dogs are hunting the river for 

 fish, which is all they need do in summer. Where the Aldan 

 River junctions with the Lena River the wading birds about meet 

 in July-August, the wading birds coming from Alaska. It seems 

 to me they would then work up the valley of the Aldan and make 

 across to Manchuria in their autumn migration. The Alaskan 

 and Tchukchi birds travel along the north-western face of the 

 Stanovoi Range and thus avoid the Okhotsk Sea and Japan. Going 

 north (9/5/03), I saw the Australian Godwits, Whimbrels and 

 Golden Plover take advantage of the rice-fields in Japan and 

 Chosan (Korea), as it was there I obtained several while changing 

 their winter plumages and waiting for the northern snow to melt. 

 Being an early season, the northern Geese, Swan, and Ducks that 

 winter here had migrated for the tundra, and would wait nearer 

 the melting snow-line. 



The main door of Siberia for me was Vladivostok. Just 

 previously I had lived three weeks in several rich valleys of S.E. 

 Palaearctica (Corea) and secured 210 specimens of birds, including 

 several migrants up from Australia, bound for Siberia. That 

 these birds were moulting impressed me, as they have no time 

 to lose when once they get to the north and its short season. 



My first night in Vladivostok (17/5/03) was dark and stormy. 

 Vast flocks of shore birds were passing low overhead, helping to 

 fill the air with their signal calls. The whole air seemed in great 

 stress of trouble. This portion of the east (Ussuri) is particularly 

 interesting to any student of migratory animals. Both plants 

 and animals of the colder north meet those of the warmer south. 

 As for the birds, all China appears to empty itself into Ussuri, 

 while its own get north to make room for them. In the midst 

 of this change untold numbers of Waders flock across from the 

 far south for the far, treeless, peaty north. It was on this coast 

 I saw, as it were, large flocks of Sea Starlings, black and active in 

 flight, called by the Japanese " Umi-suzume " — Sea-Sparrows. 

 They were Guillemots — characteristic sea-birds of Palaearctica. 

 At first sight, while sitting upright upon the rocks, they reminded 

 me of smaller Penguins. The North Pacific has its teeming 

 thousands of Alcidce as the south has its Penguins. They are 

 characteristic of the oceans of both regions north and south of 

 the equator. The Guillemots were nearly due to build their 

 nests upon the Russian rugged sea-rocks. Some of those I saw 

 were slowly wheeling over the water surface — at one minute in 



