170 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. chap. xiv. 



shore-lark from its nest, in which I found four young birds ; 

 and secured a golden plover, one of whose axillary feathers 

 was blotched with brown. In this part of the moor, the 

 yellow-headed wagtails abounded. Down in the marshy 

 ground I shot a ruff, and saw several others, besides a 

 number of red-necked phalaropes ; but of all the birds the 

 most interesting were the pipits. Our new pipit was here 

 by no means uncommon ; two or three would sometimes be 

 singing together. We secured two more specimens, one of 

 which must have been trilling its roundelay up in the air 

 for nearly an hour before we were able to shoot it. These 

 pipits poured their song indifferently from the sky, or 

 perching on a bough, or down upon the ground. The red- 

 throated pipit also we found settling freely in trees. In the 

 swampy ground we saw many sedge-warblers, fieldfares, and red- 

 wings, and one or two blue-throats. The next night we again 

 spent shooting, in a willow-covered island, just opposite Kuva. 

 We had grown very weary of those islands, and somewhat 

 disappointed in the result of our ornithological experience of 

 the delta. We had indeed secured some interesting species 

 of birds, but each island had proved almost a repetition of 

 the others; the same landscape, the same conditions, the 

 same bird-life. We were near in g Alexievtai, however, and 

 on the eastern side of the ri\er we could almost distinguish 

 the low outline of the skirts of the great Zemelskaya Tundra, 

 stretching away, we knew, on the east to the Ural Moun- 

 tains, on the north-east to the gates of the Kara Sea; and 

 the Tundra was the unexplored land, the land of promise. 

 On this island we took the nest, containing seven eggs, of 



