42 BRITISH BIRDS. 



steep bank where alders and willoAvs still flourished luxuriantly, and had 

 scarcely reached the top before I heard the cry of a Plover. The tundra 

 was hilly; with lakes and swamps and bogs in the wide valleys and plains. 

 I found myself upon an excellent jaicce of Plover-ground, covered more 

 with moss and lichen than with grass, sprinkled with patches of bare 

 pebbly earth, and interspersed with hummocky plains, where ground- 

 fruits and gay flowers were growing. I soon caught sight of both male 

 and female, and sat down with the intention of watching the latter to 

 the nest. After wasting half an hour, during which the bird wandered 

 uneasily round and round me, without showing any partiality for a special 

 locality, I came to the conclusion_, either that the eggs were hatched, in 

 which case my watching was in vain, or that I was so near the nest that 

 the female dare not come on. The male had a splendid black belly ; and 

 I decided to take my first good chance of a shot at him, and then to devote 

 another half-hour to a search for the nest. All my attempts to follow the 

 female with my glass, in order to trace her to the nest, proved inefi'ectual; 

 she was too nearly the colour of the ground and the herbage was too high. 

 Feeling convinced that I was within thirty paces of the nest, I shot the 

 male and commenced a diligent search. He proved to be, as I suspected, 

 the Asiatic Golden Plover with grey axillaries. By a wonderful piece of 

 good fortune I found the nest with four eggs in less than five minutes ; it 

 was merely a hollow in the ground, upon a piece of turfy land, overgrown 

 with moss and lichen, and was lined with broken stalks of reindeer-moss. 



At Golcheeka the Asiatic Golden Plover was very common, and I tried 

 to watch several birds to the nest, but in every case without success; 

 they behaved exactly as if they had young. I succeeded in catching one 

 young bird in down, and reluctantly came to the conclusion that I was too 

 late, on the 20th of July, for eggs. The eggs of the Asiatic Golden Plover 

 are very similar to those of the European species. Those I obtained (the 

 only authentic specimens known to exist) vary in ground-colour from light 

 buff to very pale buff with a slight olive tinge, blotched and spotted 

 with rich brown. Some eggs have the markings irregular, and many of 

 the blotches are confluent, whilst other examples have most of the markings 

 round the large end. The grey underlying markings are small and com- 

 paratively few in number. The character of the markings is precisely 

 similar to those on the eggs of the Common Golden Plover. They vary 

 in length from 1"92 to 1"85 inch, and in breadth from 1*32 to 1*27 inch. 

 The eggs of this bird very closely resemble those of the Common Golden 

 Plover, but are slightly smaller. 



The note of the Asiatic Golden Plover is very similar to that of the Grey 

 Plover. Its commonest note is a plaintive ko ; occasionally the double 

 note kl-ee is heard, but more often the treble note kl-ee-ko is uttered. In its 

 southern winter-haunts the Asiatic Golden Plover congregates into large 



