VOL. xv.J BREEDING-HABITS OF TURNSTONE. 175 



taken five minutes watching our bird on the island, so that 

 we were feehng hopeful. Unfortunately we sat down to 

 w^atch within a few yards of the eggs so only found them by 

 shifting our position. This took in all some twenty minutes. 

 Two more nests we found quickly and easily inland, in this 

 part, back about 200-300 yards from the sea and two more 

 further on, down by the sea — say 100 yards from it. The 

 land in this part had not long been free from snow and 

 presented that crushed and bare appearance that earth has 

 after snow and frost. There were extraordinary circular 

 and oval patches of a kind of red mud here and there, often 

 constituting a miniature mound, and sometimes the nests 



TURNSTONE I FEMALE APPROACHING EGGS. 



{Photographed by Seton Gordon.) 



were on these. At other times they were not, but merely on 

 low, flat ground among the small stones. One nest here was 

 in a little fold in the ground so that when the hen ran on we 

 lost sight of her. Most of the others we watched right on to 

 the eggs. It is most interesting to note that in spite of 

 the presence of large and small boulders and stones the 

 Turnstone in Spitsbergen does not lay its eggs under the 

 shelter of this somewhat scanty cover or in the small holes or 

 pockets in the soil but chooses perfectly open and bare, wind- 

 swept places for its breeding-sites. The remaining nests 

 which we found later in the week were scattered along the 

 shore of the Presqu'ile de Rennes for some six miles. The 



