154 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEl 



a hideous chorus of shrieks until nightfall. But after 

 dusk the little one must have mustered enough courage 

 to swim downstream ; for, with his parents in attend- 

 ance, he passed the hut during the night, and by 

 morning he was swimming safely where nothing could 

 hurt him, out on the broad turgid breast of the Yenesei. 



The commonest goose at Golchika was the white- 

 fronted goose {Anser alhifrons). Seebohm mentions 

 the lesser white-fronted goose {A. faimarchus), but I 

 saw none of the latter species. The natives once brought 

 in a bean-goose that they had killed in moult on the 

 tundra, and another day they brought a pair of red- 

 breasted geese (Branta ruficollis), the only ones that I 

 saw on the Yenesei. 



The march past of the geese began on 14th July, 

 and continued for a week. During this time the birds 

 migrated by day in twos and threes, in dozens, and in 

 battalions a hundred strong, to their moulting haunts 

 in the tundra. They gag-gaggled sedately to one 

 another as they flew, and each squad rigidly followed 

 the course of the Golchika River. Thus for four or five 

 weeks they loiter beside the inland lakes, as helpless as 

 nestlings, waiting for their flight quills to grow. Then, 

 during the latter part of September, they return in 

 leisurely troops, young and old in brand-new plumage, 

 to spend a couple of halcyon weeks on the flats of 

 Breokofl"sky. 



When Mr. Popham took the eggs of the red-breasted 

 goose in 1895, he records that in each case the nest was 

 built at the foot of a cliff occupied by a peregrine falcon 

 or a rough-legged buzzard, " possibly for protection 



