428 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 



water of any kind could be seen from the point where the nest was 

 situated. It was rather high up, and on the peat. 'Moved harelda 

 off her nest. Quite away from any water (as far as we could see) this 

 nest was remarkably deep and neat ; all of down, with a very little dead 

 grass and dead birch-leaves. It contained six eggs, which I took. 

 They were slightly incubated.' 



Besides the common call so well expressed in the Samoyed name, 

 this bird has a remarkably human cry. It would be hard to overstate 

 the wonderful diving powers of this bird. On July 30, when trying to 

 work some long-tailed ducks across a small lake within reach of Hyland, 

 I fired a shot which made some little ones of this species who were 

 with their mother dive. The old bird did not dive but swam straight 

 away, and, watching through the glass, I could see the young disappear, 

 and then after a bit appear again one by one close to the old one, and 

 instantly dive again ; and so, diving and reappearing, they kept up with 

 her all across. When we were lying in the Kolokolkova gulf (on the 

 mainland), in spite of the tremendous gale, which was such that the 

 boats could not venture out, there was a party of three ducks within 

 sight of us for some hours. They would dive to meet only an unusually 

 big-topped broken wave : ordinarily they paid no attention to the 

 broken water which swept over them. 



Somateria spectabilis (linn.). King Eider. 

 Pistrak (R.). Na-ma-tur (S.). 



The king eider is, after the long-tailed duck, the most abundant 

 species of duck on Kolguev, though it only bears to the latter the 

 proportion of, say, about one to twenty. We saw a great many on the 

 sea during those days on which we were sailing up and down in front 

 of the ice. I got a pair by the Kriva on June 16 — the male in 

 magnificent plumage. On the eastern coast we saw them also from the 

 outer sand-banks in considerable quantities flying up and down the 

 coast. But though they crossed the mud-flats occasionally on their way 

 to points above or below, we never, in any instance, knew a male bird 

 settle in the tidal creeks. With the exception of the bird above referred 

 to I never saw a single male of this species inland. The nests of the 



