102 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



even a great black-backed gull. The first fly far into the steppes 

 to seek out the grazing herds, and are equally decorative whether 

 they sweep gracefully over and around them in thick crowds, 

 catching in their flight the insects which the grazing beasts have 

 disturbed, or whether they run behind the herd like white pigeons 

 seeking their food in the fields. Near the reeds we also see one or 

 other of the wild-geese — a male who for a short time has left his 

 mate sitting upon the eggs, to graze, while it is still possible, on the 

 grassy patches near the reed-thicket. Soon, however, parental cares, 

 in which all ganders share, will recall him to the recesses of the 

 willows close by the lake, to the nook where the careful parents 

 have their gray -greenish-yellow goslings well hidden. Over all the 

 flooded shallows there is a more active life. On the margins of the 

 pools small littoral birds have their well-chosen fighting-grounds. 

 Fighting-ruffs,^^ now arrayed in their gayest dress, meet there in 

 combat; with depressed head each directs his beak like a couched 

 lance against the bright neck-collar which serves his foe for shield. 

 The combatants stand in most defiant attitudes, irresistibly amusing 

 to us; for a moment they look at one another with their sharp eyes 

 and then make a rush, each making a thrust, and at the same time 

 receiving one on his feathery shield. But none of the heroes is in 

 any way injured, and none allows the duelling to interfere with 

 less exciting business; for if, during the onslaught, one see a fly just 

 settling on a stem, he does not allow it to escape him, and his oppo- 

 nent is equally attentive to the swimming beetle darting about 

 on the surface of a small pool; hastily they run, one here and 

 the other there, seize the booty which they spied, and return re- 

 freshed to the fray. Meantime, however, other combatants have 

 taken the field, and the fight seems as if it would never have an end. 

 But suddenly a marsh-harrier comes swooping along, and the heroes 

 hastily quit the field; they rise together in close-packed fiight, and 

 hurry to another pond, there to repeat the same old game. The 

 dreaded harrier is the terror of all the other birds of the lake. At 

 his approach the weaker ducks rise noisily, and, a moment later, 

 their stronger relatives, more disturbed by the ducks than by the 

 bird of prey, rise impetuously, and with whizzing beating of wings, 



