P ETCH OR A 415 



landed on the tundra. We had another successful day's 

 search for Grey Plovers. 



At the first nest we found, the male uttered nothing 

 but the single note, and the female was very silent. I 

 watched them both as they stood on the same range of 

 hummocks at twenty paces' distance, and saw the male 

 open his bill as he cried. When we first saw them, quite 

 two hundred yards off, one of them was already sham- 

 ming lameness and broken wing. The male appeared to 

 be much more anxious than the female, and ' shammed ' 

 a great deal more. When not more than thirty yards 

 from my post of observation, he crept amongst the white 

 grass with which the flat bogs are sometimes covered, 

 and lay down, wings stretched out on the ground, motion- 

 less, or nearly so, for fully half a minute. After finding 

 the nest, which we did by marking the spots whence the 

 birds rose, I shot both $ and ? . The nest contained 

 the full complement of eggs, all chipped, and three having 

 small holes near the large ends. The bird of one we 

 extracted, and wrapped him and the other three eggs 

 in cotton wool. He arrived at Alexievka alive but 

 * poorly.' 



Another pair we watched unsuccessfully for a long 

 time, and of this pair the female appeared to be the 

 more anxious parent. Failing to mark the exact position 

 of the nest, we walked to where the female appeared 

 oftenest and displayed most finesse. ' Malenkai ' Feodor 

 found the fragment of an egg, showing that the young 

 had run. 



Two other birds, high in air, flew in the peculiar 

 manner I have before described, but not quite as Tern- 

 like, and with shorter, quicker beats of the wings, the 

 wing not nearly meeting over the back, as before noticed ; 

 and they uttered the treble note. 



Simeon came forward with three more Grey Plover's 



