212 IN CAMP AT DVOINIK 



lining. The position was on a comparatively dry extent 

 of tundra, sloping from the top of the little turf cliffs that 

 rise from the lagoon down to the sandhills at the twin 

 capes, between which the tide runs in and out of a little 

 inland sea. These sandhills are flanked on the side next 

 the sea with piles of drift-wood of all sizes and shapes 

 lofty trees which have been mown down by the ice when 

 the great river broke up and in many places overflowed 

 its banks, squared balks of timber washed away by the 

 floods from the stores of the Petchora Timber-trading 

 Company, and spars of luckless ships that have been 

 wrecked on these inhospitable shores. They are sparingly 

 sprinkled over with esparto grass, and soon run into an 

 irregular strip of sand and gravel. This part of the 

 coast, however, did not seem to have any attraction 

 for the Little stints. There were plenty of ringed plover 

 upon it, and a few Temminck's stints ; and we saw a 

 pair of snow-buntings with five young, which had probably 

 been bred amongst the drift-wood. At Dvoinik, however, 

 for perhaps a verst from each twin cape, between the 

 sand and the mouth of the little inland sea, is an extent 

 of dead flat land, covered over with thick short grass, 

 and full of little lakes, mostly very shallow and filled 

 with black or coffee-coloured mud with an inch or two of 

 brackish water upon it. Some of these pools are covered 

 with aquatic plants, and others are open water. These 

 lakes and pools seem to be the real point of attraction ; 

 and on their edges the Little stints feed, in small flocks 

 of from half a dozen birds to a score, as they happen to 

 meet from the tundra. The large flock of perhaps a 

 hundred or more birds, which was occasionally seen, 

 might possibly have been last year's birds and not 

 breeding ; but more probably it consisted entirely of 

 males, which, so far as we had an opportunity of observ- 



