164 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. CHAP. xiv. 



a waste of willows. Far as the eye could reach, on all sides 

 of us, stretched this never-ending, almost impenetrable 

 willow-swamp, with winding Jcourias and lakes. The only 

 break in the monotony was here and there a straggling bit 

 of pasture land, on which stood a house or two, where a cow 

 fed and the peasants fished, and where, in the autumn, they 

 would make hay. Terns, gulls, and oyster-catchers were now 

 not unfrequently seen, in addition to the almost numberless 

 ducks that were breeding everywhere. On the shores could 

 occasionally be seen a Terek sandpiper, a Temminck's stint, or 

 a dotterel. In the thickets the blue-throat was giving way 

 to the sedge-warbler, but the willow-wren remained the com- 

 monest bird. The notes of the redpole, the brambling, and 

 the redwing still sounded. The fieldfare and the reed-bunting, 

 as well as the yellow-headed, green, and white wagtails 

 were still to be often met with, the little bunting being espe- 

 cially plentiful. That day I took my first nest of the Terek 

 sandpiper. I was walking in a wood of tall willows, when 

 the bird rose at my feet, and silently fluttered away. There 

 were four eggs laid in a slight hollow, lined with broad grass. 

 We also found the nest of an oyster-catcher, containing 

 four eggs. 



We were now a little to the north of the Arctic 

 Circle; and at three in the morning moored our boat on 

 the shores of an island, among whose willows grew an occa- 

 sional birch or alder. I spent five hours upon it. Sedge- 

 warblers were singing lustily, and sometimes so melodiously 

 that we almost took them to be blue-throats. Soon, how- 

 ever, my attention was arrested by a song with which I was 



