OUR FIRST LANDINGS 41 
and all about in parties varying in number from a single 
pair to perhaps nine or a dozen together. I shall devote 
later on in this book a separate chapter to the birds of 
Kolguev. 
This book will doubtless fall into the hands of many a 
better ornithologist than myself. But some of my 
readers who have not had much time or inclination to 
follow the birds, may like, I think, to have a tip or two, 
which my ornithologist readers will skip, about each bird 
as we come to it. This, I hope, will make the book 
more generally interesting. 
The great charm of Arctic natural history lies in its 
alliances with our own. Go right away into the tropics 
and you go to another world—wonderful, dazzling but 
strange. Those birds are here in our aviaries, those 
flowers we have under glass. But even high up in the 
circumpolar area you have many of our own old friends 
among the flowers, dwarfed maybe, stunted by the cold, 
but still the same; or else just little cousins not very far 
removed. 
And so too in the Arctic, north of Europe, nearly all 
are birds we call British. By this we mean only that 
they have all been recorded here at some time or other. 
Many, as the Tromsé fieldfare, stay with us all the 
winter, and then go away to nest. Some only stop with 
us a little while in spring and autumn—just in passing 
through to higher lands. 
And the little stint is one of these. You may see 
