268 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. 



CHAP. XXI. 



however, does not seem to have any attraction for the little 

 stints. There were plenty of ringed plover upon it, and a 

 few Teinminck'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 almost hidden, or traceable onlv by 

 rows of cotton-grass. The tussocks are covered with green 

 moss, with now and then a little reindeer-moss; but this 

 undergrowth is almost hidden with cloudberry, a few species 

 of juncus, and sundry carices, with occasionally a few dwarf 

 shrubs and flowers of the tundra. The nests wore within a 

 hundred yards of the place where I shot the five little stints 

 on the 14th of July, on a comparatively dry extent of tundra 



