22 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



I landed by myself in Reno, in a little bay where is a 

 turfed hut of the keeper — the only person on the island. 



Reno was more interesting to me by far than Homo, 

 because it includes a much greater variety of land. The 

 coast on the south side is most curiously scarped, rising 

 in a series of sloping limestone slabs or terraces. The 

 steps are really from ten to. say, twenty feet in height, 

 and full of crevices, nice convenient places for birds to 

 nest in. Beyond this is rolling grass. 



In these crevices nested the black guillemots. I 

 found the sloping terraces slippery and difficult to walk 

 on. But the guillemots didn't. Far from it. They 

 were so bold that they came and settled, and ran into 

 their nesting holes right under my nose, as I lay down and 

 looked over. And they surprised me with their activity ; 

 for they lit as lightly as any pigeon on the rocks and 

 ran as nimbly. You could never have guessed from 

 their movements that you were looking at web-footed 

 birds at all. Indeed they appeared to me remarkably 

 like pigeons with extra red legs and beaks. They 

 nested so low down that I could easily put my hand 

 into their nests. 



I picked up a little lesser black-backed gull in the 

 down, and brought him home. He was running about 

 in the grass famously — head down and shoulders up, just 

 as a falcon runs. 



Eiders were nesting everywhere, in every possible- 

 place — the sides of the cliffs, the rocks by the sea, the 



