136 Mr. S. A. Buturlin on the 



A pair or two of Totanus fuscus nearly always breed with 

 them, and not ^infrequently Colymbus arcticus and Fuligula 

 glacialis, sometimes accompanied by the White-winged Gull 

 (Larus glaucescens ?) and a pair or two of Squatarola helvetica. 

 A little low island in a lake is usually selected for the 

 breeding-place, and this makes the nests very difficult of 

 access, as until the last days of June a boat can only be 

 used near the banks and must be then dragged over the 

 ice, which is exceedingly slippery and generally unsafe after 

 June comes in, especially near the islands, as I found to my 

 cost. One of the colonies, however, was on a piece of wet 

 tundra near two lakes, a square kilometre in extent, covered 

 with a labyrinth of pools of snow-water from two to six or 

 even ten inches deep, but practicable in wading- boots, thanks 

 to its floor of everlasting ice beneath the underlying mud. 

 Between these pools, which were from fifteen to fifty feet in 

 diameter, were pieces of very wet ground covered with Carices, 

 damp mossy spots, and even tiny patches of comparatively 

 dry bog covered with lichens or Betula nana. In this colony 

 I found ten nests of Rhodostethia, placed, among those of the 

 Tern, on little mossy swamps almost bare of grass, evidently 

 because the more grassy places were too wet and unsafe. But 

 in the remaining colonies the state of affairs was otherwise; 

 there the Torn nested on the moss — sometimes making no 

 nest at all — and laid its one or two eggs much nearer to the 

 dry parts of the little islands, which were perhaps a hundred 

 yards long and from ten to twenty yards wide, while the llosy 

 Gulls made their nests on wet grassy spots or bogs much 

 nearer to the water, and these nests rose from four to ten 

 inches — generally from five to eight inches — above the sur- 

 face. The hollow formed in the grass (dead grass, of course, 

 as green grass is hardly seen even by the 20th of June) is 

 about six or seven inches in diameter, but the nest proper is 

 a shallow cup only about four or four and half inches in 

 diameter. It is composed of dry grass and Carices, sometimes 

 with the addition of a few dry Betula or Salix leaves, while 

 I once saw one made of white reindeer-moss. The cup of 

 the nest is from §■ to \ in. — generally \ in. — thick. 



