208 BRITISH BIRDS. 



shores of the lake, where I had seen the birds before, and earefuUy searched 

 the sand-hills and the other lakes, but found no trace whatever of any 

 breeding-station, only a flock of small Sandpipers occasionally to be seen, 

 but so wild that we could not get within range. We then separated for a 

 stroll on the tundra. I had not gone far before I heard our interpreter 

 Piottuch shouting in a state of great excitement. Harvie-Brown was the 

 first to come up ; and I joined them shortly afterwards. I found them 

 sitting on the ground with a couple of Little Stints in down. I sat down 

 beside them, and we watched the parent bird as she was fluttering and 

 flying and running all round us, sometimes coming within a foot of one of 

 us. After securing the old bird Ave went on a short distance, and Piottuch 

 again made loud demonstrations of delight. This time it was nest and 

 eggs. The nest was like that of most Sandpipers, a mere depression in the 

 ground, with such dead maroshka (cloudberry) leaves and other dry 

 material as was within easy reach scraped together to serve as lining. The 

 position was on a comparatively dry extent of tundra, sloping from the top 

 of the little turf cliff's that rise from the lagoon down to the sand-hills at 

 the twin capes, between which the tide runs in and out of a little inland 

 sea. These sand-hills are flanked on the side next the sea with piles of 

 drift-wood, of all sizes and shapes — lofty trees which have been mown down 

 by the ice when the great river broke up and in many places overflowed its 

 banks, squared balks of timber washed away by the floods from the stores 

 of the Petchora Timber-trading Company, and spars of luckless ships that 

 have been wrecked on these inhospitable shores. They are sparingly 

 sprinkled over with esparto grass, and soon run into an irregular strip 

 of sand and gravel. This part of the coast, however, does not seem to have 

 any attraction for the Little Stints. There were plenty of Ring-Plovers 

 upon it and a few Temminck's Stints; and we saw a pair of Snow- 

 Buntings with five young, which had probably been bred amongst the 

 drift-wood. At Dvoinik, however, for perhaps a verst from each twin cape, 

 between the sand and the mouth of the little inland sea, is an extent of 

 dead flat land, covered over with thick short grass, and full of little lakes, 

 mostly very shallow and filled with black or coffee-coloured mud with an 

 inch or two of brackish water upon it. Some of these pools are covered 

 with aquatic plants and others are open water. These lakes and pools 

 seem to be the real point of attraction ; and on their edges the Little Stints 

 feed in small flocks of from half a dozen birds to a score, as they happen 

 to meet from the tundra. The large flock of perhaps a hundred or more 

 birds, which was occasionally seen, might possibly have been last year's 

 birds and not breeding ; but more probably it consisted entirely of males, 

 which, so far as we had an opportunity of observing, do not take any 

 part in incubation. The ground where the nests were placed was full of 

 tussocks or hummocks, close together, the swampy ground between being 



