428 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
water of any kind could be seen from the point where the nest was 
situated. It was rather high up, and on the peat. ‘Moved harelda 
off her nest. Quite away from any water (as far as we could see) this 
nest was remarkably deep and neat ; all of down, with a very little dead 
grass and dead birch-leaves. It contained six eggs, which I took. 
They were slightly incubated.’ 
Besides the common call so well expressed in the Samoyed name, 
this bird has a remarkably human cry. It would be hard to overstate 
the wonderful diving powers of this bird. On July 30, when trying to 
work some long-tailed ducks across a small lake within reach of Hyland, 
I fired a shot which made some little ones of this species who were 
with their mother dive. The old bird did not dive but swam straight 
away, and, watching through the glass, I could see the young disappear, 
and then after a bit appear again one by one close o the old one, and 
instantly dive again; and so, diving and reappearing, they kept up with 
her all across. When we were lying in the Kolokolkova gulf (on the 
mainland), in spite of the tremendous gale, which was such that the 
boats could not venture out, there was a party of three ducks within 
sight of us for some hours. They would dive to meet only an unusually 
big-topped broken wave: ordinarily they paid no attention to the 
broken water which swept over them. 
Somateria spectabilis (LINN.). King Eider. 
Pistrak (R.). Na-ma-tiir (S.). 
The king eider is, after the long-tailed duck, the most abundant 
species of duck on Kolguev, though it only bears to the latter the 
proportion of, say, about one to twenty. We saw a great many on the 
sea during those days on which we were sailing up and down in front 
of the ice. I got a pair by the Kriva on June 16—the male in 
magnificent plumage. On the eastern coast we saw them also from the 
outer sand-banks in considerable quantities flying up and down the 
coast. But though they crossed the mud-flats occasionally on their way 
to points above or below, we never, in any instance, knew a male bird 
settle in the tidal creeks. With the exception of the bird above referred 
to I never saw a single male of this species inland. The nests of the 
