8 



Samoyede servant (Simeon), who was a most useful and active assistant in search for eggs. Two 

 old nests, however, which we found ourselves, were deep circular hollows sparingly lined with 

 down, and were placed amongst the vegetable scum which accumulates on the surface of the 

 stagnant brackish water of the inlet of the sea at Dovinik, and which had been drifted up and 

 left high and dry by a former higher level of the water when the latter again receded. This 

 scum, when dried by the sun, has the appearance of tbin felt or brown papier-mache ; and so 

 close is the resemblance that it was once jocularly suggested that it might be used for filling up 

 holes in an old pair of felt boots belonging to our good friend and companion Piottuch. I fear, 

 however, it would hardly have withstood the application of needle and thread. As the nests 

 above mentioned were found just where a line of this peculiar substance had been left by the 

 receding water, we did not satisfactorily make out whether the birds had scraped (or chosen) a 

 hollow where the dried scum was most plentiful, or had gathered a portion of it and disposed it 

 round the edges of the nest afterwards. I am inclined to think the former the most likely, 

 however, judging from the general appearance of the nests and their surroundings. There was 

 no other cover or shelter in the immediate neighbourhood, such as the birds on the higher 

 tundra and by the willow- and dwarf-birch-covered sides of the freshwater lakes can avail 

 themselves of. Notwithstanding the numbers of Long-tailed Ducks we saw and shot, their 

 eggs were by no means amongst the most plentiful obtained, either by the Zyriani workmen or 

 by our own party. 



" On the 14th July we met with the Long-tailed Ducks in a small flock far out near the 

 sand-banks of the Golaievskai group of islands, which stretch across the entrance of the Petchora 

 Gulf. We have no reason. to, 'doubt that there were many more besides those we identified 

 amongst the immense masses of Ducks which had congregated on the sandy shores of these far- 

 out islands; but we believed these great flocks to have been for the most part composed of 

 Black Scoters, which at the same season of the year also gather together in vast numbers on the 

 White Sea, as was once observed by Alston and myself near Suzma (Ibis, 1873, p. 71). In the 

 uncertain light of early morning, or when refraction was busily at work, it was no easy matter to 

 identify a Duck at any distance. Indeed it was often a matter of some difficulty, as the captain 

 of the river-steamer remarked at the time, ' to distinguish between an ostrov (island) and a flock 

 of ootki ' (Ducks)." 



To these notes Mr. Seebohm adds the following information : — " The Long-tailed Duck is 

 by no means a close sitter ; and we had the greatest difficulty in finding the nest, the female 

 apparently slipping off quietly before we came near. We only succeeded in obtaining four 

 sittings of eggs, containing respectively three, five, six, and seven. None of these nests we 

 found ourselves ; but we found two nests containing Long-tailed Ducks' down. These were 

 mere hollows in the grass containing no lining but the down, and were both of them situated 

 amongst the debris left by a recent flood or high tide on the shores of the inland sea or lake, 

 where we found the Little Stint breeding. 



" The down is small, about the same size as that of the Shoveller and Teal, darkish brown 

 with pale centres, slightly darker than that of the Pintail, not quite so dark as that of the 

 Shoveller. 



" The Long-tailed Duck is decidedly a quarrelsome bird, and we frequently saw them 



