A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 129 



swampy parts of the tundra. When their haunts were 

 invaded the old birds would dash wildly round the 

 intruder with their white undercoverts flashing. Mr. 

 Popham says of the bird's call : "At one time I 

 thought I heard it make a sound like a dunlin, but 

 as I afterwards saw dunlins close by I was probably 

 mistaken."^ The alarm cry which I constantly heard 

 was a shrill triple note : wich-wich-wich, repeated two 

 or three times, and uttered when the bird was both 

 at rest and on the wing. The curlew-sandpiper was 

 not as bold as the dunlin when the breeding-ground 

 was approached ; and when the young were hatched 

 the parents became very wild and circled rapidly over 

 the tundra just out of gunshot. At the beginning of 

 August, I secured a bird of the year in a big swamp 

 swarming with little stints and golden plover. It is a 

 wise provision of nature that these young waders should 

 sprout their flight quills before they are many hours out 

 of the egg. They fledge with incredible rapidity, and 

 once they can fly it is very difficult to approach within 

 shot of them. I stalked one bird which was following; 

 its parent, but each time that I came within range, up 

 she would jump, call her youngster to follow her, and 

 escort him to another part of the marsh. It was 

 difficult to follow the movements of the bird, owing to 

 the swarms of mosquitoes, but at last I thought that I 

 had marked him down, and fired. But when I went to 

 pick up the specimen, I found to my disgust that I had 

 " shot at a pigeon and killed a crow," for it was not a 

 sandpiper at all, but a young dunlin. However, later 



1 Ibis, 1898, vol. iv. 



