A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 47 



even more impressive than the silence of the tundra, for, 

 still as it was, one felt as if a life in which one had no 

 share was going on around. All the dense vegetation, 

 grass and undershrub and tree, seemed to be en- 

 gaged in a desperate battle for light and air. You 

 saw the results of this tremendous wrestling bout in 

 the rotten branches that cracked in the moss underfoot, 

 and in the vigourous young undergrowth above them, 

 until you felt oppressed and stifled, as if you were a 

 trespasser in this tense and secret place. 



I had walked for a mile before I realised that I was 

 not the only living thing in the forest. A pair of dusky 

 ousels [Turdus fuscatus) were breeding in a spruce fir- 

 tree beside a watercourse, and their harsh clamour of 

 alarm disturbed the stillness rudely. The nest was 

 built about five feet from the ground, and contained 

 four eggs, which, to a casual eye, would not be dis- 

 tinguishable from those of a blackbird. When Seebohm 

 visited the Yenesei in 1877 he found the nest of this 

 thrush, but it contained young birds. Later on, Mr. 

 Popham took a number of nests with eggs. '* These," he 

 writes,^ " were generally placed in small isolated trees, 

 and rarely on the ground, though none were more than 

 two feet from it." In 1914 I took two nests, both of 

 which were built, exceptionally perhaps, at least five 

 feet from the ground. The song of the dusky ousel as 

 I heard it in the taiga is loud and clear, though rather 

 broken in phrasing, something like the song of our own 

 missel-thursh. When their breeding-ground is invaded, 

 both birds clamour like fieldfares. The dusky ousel is 



1 Ihis, 1898, p. 493. 



