PLOVER LANGUAGE 175 



them. On the wing this whistle is lengthened out to 

 three notes. I had some difficulty in catching this note 

 exactly. It is not so often uttered as the two others I 

 have mentioned, and is generally heard when you least 

 expect it ; but I am almost sure it is a combination of 

 the alarm-note with the call-note kl-ee-kop. If 1 wanted 

 to make a free translation from Ploverski into English I 

 should say that kl-ee means " Hallo ! old fellow," and kop 

 means " Mind what you are about !" 



We procured our tenth nest of the grey plover the 

 same afternoon. It was found by our Samoyede, who 

 brought us three eggs and the male and female shot at 

 the nest. He accidentally broke the fourth egg. As it 

 contained a live young bird, we placed these three eggs 

 in our hatching basket, where we had made a snug nest 

 of bean-goose-down. 



By this time we were pretty well tired with tramping 

 the tundra. The ceaseless persecution of the mosquitoes, 

 and the stifling feeling caused by having to wear a veil 

 with the thermometer above summer heat, had taxed our 

 powers of endurance almost to the utmost ; and we turned 

 our faces resolutely towards our boat ; but a most anxious 

 pair of grey plovers were too great an attraction to us to 

 be resisted. We watched them for some time, during 

 which a pair of ringed plovers persisted in obtruding 

 themselves impertinently between us and the objects of 

 our attention. This pair of grey plovers also puzzled us, 

 and we concluded that they possibly had young, and 

 consequently we gave up the search. We had each 

 marked a place where we thought a nest might be ; and 

 we each of us went to satisfy ourselves that it was not 

 there. The two places were about fifty yards apart. 

 The birds first went up to Harvie-Brown and tried to 

 draw him away by flying about and feigning lameness. 



