228 SIBERIA IN EUROPE. CHAP. xix. 



hollowed slightly at the apex and lined with some irregu- 

 larly disposed tufts of seaweed. The young in down were 

 running about on the flat sandbank. We secured half-a- 

 dozen and shot four old birds. The young were less spotted 

 than those of most gulls usually are : the old birds were 

 pure white, with delicate, dove-coloured mantles, paler than 

 those of our herring-gull. The legs and feet were pale 

 flesh-tinted pink ; the beak and the line round the eye were 

 straw-yellow. The point of the beak was horn-colour, with 

 the usual dark vermilion spot on the angle of the lower 

 mandible. The pupils of the eye were blue-black, and the 

 irides very pale straw-yellow. The interior of the mouth 

 was the colour of the feet. The birds to whom the two 

 nests belonged were easily shot ; they made repeated down- 

 ward darts upon us, like terns. The rest of the flock kept 

 well out of range, soon settling down at a point on the ex- 

 treme end of the island, and, on being fired at there, flew 

 right away. Among these glaucous gulls were two imma- 

 ture birds and one or two Siberian herring-gulls. After the 

 dispersion of the flock that had engaged all our attention, we 

 began to notice the presence of small parties of sandpipers 

 feeding about the island. They were very wild, running 

 about on the low, wet sandbanks, rising hardly a couple of 

 feet above high-tide level, and about the margins of the 

 little pools in the lower parts of the island. Among them 

 were some dunlins; we succeeded in shooting a couple of 

 these, and one or two sanderlings.* These birds were 



* The sanderling (Calidris arenaria, I of Great Britain and Ireland during 

 Linn.) is a common bird on the coasts | winter, and still more so in spring 



