A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 135 



for eggs, but this time the bird rather overdid the 

 business. She, or rather he, drooped a wing and that 

 gave the show away at once. I sat down to wait, and 

 in two minutes the bird had cuddled down upon his 

 eggs again. After that I found many nests, both out 

 on the tundra, and also in the riverside marshes, in 

 company with reeves and phalaropes. 



The bird shown in the illustration was photographed 

 on Golchika Island itself. I went to the place armed 

 with a large reflex camera, racked out to its fullest 

 extent. It seemed rather like taking out a siege gun 

 to shoot rabbits, but the bird was so small that I feared 

 that she would not appear upon the plate at all unless 

 a lens of long focus was used. But this turned out to 

 be quite unnecessary. The chief difiiculty was to get 

 sufiSciently far away from the sitter (it was she this 

 time), who tripped round my feet, not afraid, but just 

 a little nervous lest I should accidentally crush her 

 eggs. When I touched the nest, she sprang up almost 

 as if she would have flown at me, and then toddled 

 sideways with wings trailing distractedly and pufied- 

 out feathers. The tameness of the little stint at the 

 nest is quite uncanny. It seems as if the life of the 

 race that she fosters has power for a season to raise 

 the bird above such commonplace matters as food and 

 fear, and fills her with a sort of ecstasy of maternity. 

 Later on, when the eggs are chipping, this passion to 

 brood rises to such a pitch that the bird will actually 

 sufi'er herself to be taken in the hand rather than leave 

 her nest. I use the words he and she indiscriminately 

 when writing of the stints, for both sexes share the 



