A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 33 



first nest on 23rd June, and that was a full week later 

 than the date on which I first saw the bird. 



Behind the village there was a stretch of marshy 

 lake, and the debatable land between woodside and 

 water teemed with birds. Redwings, fieldfares, and the 

 graceful yellow-headed wagtail were breeding, but the 

 willow-warblers were still courting in the tree-tops, so 

 it seemed to me. I saw Phylloscopus horealis, P. tristis, 

 and P. superciliosus. The latter was very common, 

 and its little monotonous song tinkled on without ceas- 

 ing from every bush. Here, for the first time, I saw 

 the love flights of the pintailed snipe. Half a dozen of 

 the birds were buzzing over the forest. They rose in 

 circles to a great height, uttering a sharp single note 

 not unlike the keJc of the common snipe, and then made 

 a tremendous perpendicular dive earthwards. Dresser ^ 

 describes the noise as being like the bubbling of water, 

 but I found that this was rather misleading. The sound 

 when heard at close quarters is a hollow roar, extra- 

 ordinarily loud and deep. I should not compare it to 

 water at all, unless it has a remote resemblance to the 

 noise made by filling up quickly a vase with a narrow 

 neck. Two pairs of wood sandpipers were honeymoon- 

 ing among the rushes. Their voices were happy : 

 taludle taludle lirra lirra taludle, and from a birch 

 tree fell a shower of the most liquid notes that are heard 

 in the Yenesei forests — the song of the Siberian thrush. 

 But Turdus sibiricus is the wariest of a wary family ; 

 and when he spied me among the bushes, he dropped 

 out of sight with a low chuck-chuck, for all the world 



1 A Manual of Palcearctic Birds, 

 3 



