400 TRAVELS OF A NATURALIST 



the Willow Warbler, but the eggs are infinitely smaller, 

 about half the size. They also brought a couple of 

 Ked-throated Diver's eggs with the bird, which they 

 said was trapped on or at the nest. I have still to learn 

 how that was managed, knowing the difficulty attendant 

 upon trapping Divers at their nests in Scotland. 



July 5. 



On returning to Alexievka it was now Monday, the 

 5th of July a message came from Piottuch for one of us 

 to go and relieve him ! He had lain from, say, 4 p.m. 

 till 11 p.m., and had never seen the Swan. 



I wrote the following notes as I lay under a net- 

 work of green branches in the midst of a dense thicket 

 of willows two and a half versts from Alexievka, think- 

 ing myself all the time a fool for my pains, but feeling 

 that, in justice to the man who found the nest, we should 

 do all we could to secure the bird. 



I wondered further what Wild Swan under the blue 

 vault of heaven would come to its nest when a path 

 a yard wide had been beaten down to shoot along, and a 

 conspicuous hut of branches built within view of it, 

 and easily seen from above. A three- storied house 

 might just as well have been built ; the chance of a 

 shot would have been no worse and the place been 

 more comfortable. 



The north wind blew keen and cold, and I had 

 foolishly trusted to Piottuch's sense, or at least his fond- 

 ness for creature comforts, and to his having a malitza ; 

 and took no malitza myself. Live and learn. 



But cold and discomfort would be nothing if there was 

 the ghost of a chance of a shot, which I have no hope for, 

 unless the Swan has bad eyes. As Simeon said before at 

 Kuja, ' If the Swan has bad eyes he will shoot it.' 



I am in for five hours of it, however. I'd like a glass 



