100 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [, hap. 



insects. Its -well-filled crop shows how well the bh-d knows 

 how to collect its food even in regions where the entomologist 

 can only with difficulty get hold of a few of the animal forms 

 belonging to his field of research. The purple sandpiper lays 

 its four or five eggs in a pretty little nest of dry straw on open 

 grassy or mossy plains a little distance from the sea. It also 

 endeavours to protect its nest by acting a comedy like that of 

 the tjvfjo. Its flesh is delicious. 



In the company of the purple sandpiper there is often seen a 

 somewhat larger wader, or, more correctly, a bird intermediate 

 between the waders and the swimming birds. This is the 

 beautiful hrednachhade siynsnacppayi, the grey (or red) phalarope 

 {Phalaropus fulicarius, Bonap.). It is not rare on Spitzbergen, 

 and it is exceedingly common, perhaps even the commonest 

 bird on the north coast of Asia. I imagine therefore that it is 

 not absent from Novaya Zemlya, though there has hitherto been 

 observed there only the nearly allied smalnaehbade simsnaeppan, 

 the red - necked phalarope {Phalaropus hypcrlorcvs, Lath.). 

 This bird might be taken as the symbol of married love, so 

 faithful are the male and female, being continually to be seen 

 in each other's company. While they search for their food in 

 pools of water along the coast, they nearly alwa^^s bear each 

 other company, swimming in zigzag, so that every now and 

 then they brush past each other. If one of them is shot, the 

 other flies away onh" for a short time until it observes that its 

 mate is left behind. It then flies back, swims with evident 

 distress round its dead friend, and pushes it with its bill to get 

 it to rise. It does not, however, spend an}^ special care on its 

 nest or the rearing of its young, at least to judge by the nest 

 which Duner found at Bell Sound in 1864. The position of 

 the nest was indicated by three eggs laid without anything 

 below them on the bare ground, consisting of stone splinters. 

 The flesh of the phalarope is a great delicacy, like that of other 

 waders which occur in the regions in question, but which I 

 cannot now stay to describe. 



During excursions in the interior of the land along the coast, 

 nne often hears, near heaps of stones or shattered cliffs, a 

 merry twitter. It comes from an old acquaintance from the 

 home land, the snoesparfvcn or snoclacrkan, the snow-bunting 

 {Emheriza nivalis, L.). The name is well chosen, for in winter 

 this pretty bird lives as far south as the snow goes on the 

 Scandinavian peninsula, and in summer betakes itself to the 

 snow limit in Lapland, the tundra of North Siberia, or the 

 coasts of SjDitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya. It there builds 

 its carefully-constructed nest of grass, feathers and down, deep 

 in a stone heap, preferably surrounded by a grassy plain. 

 The air resounds with the twitter of the little gay warbler, 



