BIRDS IN THE DELTA 129 



pipers, the Terek, and Temminck's stints were as common 

 as ever. We watched one of the latter to its nest, shot it, 

 and secured the four eggs. Early next morning I brought 

 down a skylark, the second only that we had seen. I 

 also shot a blue-throat, a species which by this time had 

 grown very rare. The commonest warbler, abounding 

 in some places, was the sedge-warbler, next to it was the 

 willow-warbler. Now and then also we heard the red- 

 wing, and generally where we stopped there would greet 

 us the song of the new pipit pouring down from the sky. 

 The bird would remain up in the air for a long time, then 

 fly down and alight in the middle of a dense willow 

 swamp, rendering it impossible for us to secure another 

 specimen. A red-throated pipit that my companion shot 

 out of a tree furnished us with the best possible evidence 

 that this species is much more arboreal in its habits than 

 the meadow-pipit. The yellow-headed wagtail had now 

 become quite a common bird, but occasionally we still 

 saw the white wagtail. At one island we shot a pair of 

 small spotted woodpeckers, which must have found the 

 alder and willow-trunks very small for their nests. I 

 found also two fieldfares' nests, one with four, the other 

 with six eggs. Late in the evening we came upon a 

 large flock of great snipe, and in the course of half an hour 

 we had shot ten. They were flying about in companies 

 of about six, continually alighting on the ground, where 

 the sound of their feeding was often heard. One or two 

 common snipe were also hovering overhead and frequently 

 drumming. On one island we saw signs that the breaking 

 up of the Petchora did not take place so silently in the 

 delta as it had done at Ust-Zylma. On the flat shore we 

 discovered a small range of miniature mountains some 

 eighteen to twenty feet high. We took them at first 

 from a distance to be low sandhills, but on nearer 



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