10 BRITISH BIRDS. [VOL. XI. 
plaintive sound, as inarticulate as a sob or sigh, that 
seemed to be wrung from the bird by the strength of her 
distress ; and also once a long sibilant trill which may 
be the note written by Naumann as “ Sisihririri.”” Other- 
wise the bird was very silent at the nest. The note that 
I liked most to hear, however, came later in the summer 
when the broods joined in little “trips” on the great 
open slopes of the tundra, which at that season, when 
the Asiatic Golden Plovers were congregating in the 
swamps, were empty of any sound or movement but that 
of the wind. Here, walking over the rough hummocky 
ground, you would suddenly hear a tinkle of notes, very 
soft and liquid, like the drip, not of water, but of some- 
thing slower and richer—nectar, perhaps, which, as it 
was the drink of the world in the celestial Childhood of 
Things, surely must have been golden and sticky. 
Then up would spring half a dozen Dotterel, and 
whirling away up the slope on a curious curve, as of a 
ball that is thrown with a spin and breaks sideways from 
its trajectory, they would plump down as suddenly as 
they rose, and instantly became as invisible as if they 
had been turned into the peaty tussocks around. Even 
with a field-glass it was very difficult to pick up their 
slim stone-coloured forms among their surroundings, and 
it was hard to believe that the tangerine tint of their 
breasts, which appears in the first plumage and persists 
through life, could be so inconspicuous on the grey tundra. 
I have seen as many as twenty birds in such a “ trip” 
in August. 
One day I was lying on the tundra, and taking up my 
field-glasses to look at some distant spot, was astonished 
to find that it was eclipsed by a moving blurr near at 
hand, which was presently condensed into a Dotterel 
which was crossing a ridge only twenty yards in front 
of me. I then became aware that four birds, three young 
and an adult, were feeding close by, and because the place 
was not far from the site of the nest shown in the 
photograph, I have a sentimental hope that it may have 
