182 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. viii. 



their young so early, unless it may be that they need 

 water which they cannot obtain on the hills. This habit 

 made it rather difficult to take an exact census of the 

 birds in the district. Until after the middle of July, I 

 should have said that the birds were scarce. This was 

 partly owing to their scattered arrangement — each pair 

 breeding like Plover, a little apart from their fellows — 

 and partly to their quiet behaviour at the nest, for it was 

 possible to walk over the breeding-ground and not observe 

 the birds at all, owing to their smallness and silence. 

 Tliis was changed when several broods met in the 

 marshes, and the old birds then became very wild and 

 demonstrative. Then the species seemed to be twice 

 as abundant as before. 



Mr. Popham {Ibis, 1898, p. 516) says of the bird's 

 call : "At one time I thought I heard it make a sound 

 like a Dunlin, but as I afterwards saw Dunlins close by 

 I was probably mistaken." The alarm cry which I 

 constantly heard was a shrill triple note, " wiek-wiek- 

 wiek," or it might sometimes be syllabled, " wiek-a- 

 wiek," two or three times repeated, both when the bird 

 was at the nest and on the wing. 



The Curlew-Sandpipers seem to leave the district 

 about the middle of August. I cannot remember seeing 

 one on the tundra after the 14th of the month, and 

 neither did I see any on migration at the Breokoffsky 

 Islands where I spent the first part of September. 



With regard to the unexpected appearance of this 

 bird, as far to the south-west as Golchika, I should say 

 that this does not necessarily imply a regular extension 

 of its breeding range in this direction, but rather is to 

 be referred to the weather. The conditions of climate 

 in those regions are different to those experienced further 

 south. Up there it is quite possible that at one spot 

 summer may prevail, and the tundra swarm with birds, 

 while a hundred miles further on the snow may not melt 

 until August. The limits of the arctic ice cap vary from 

 year to year, and therefore birds such as the present 



