78 



British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs 



mouth of the Ob to that of the Lena; also that they are observed in the spring, 

 flying from the Caspian Sea, along the Volga northward, in small flocks, and are 

 seen about Zarizyn, between the 5th and loth of April— facts which are probably 

 correct at the present day. 



From what we know now of the Red-breasted Bemacle, its range is com- 

 paratively a restricted one; its summer nesting quarters probably extending from 

 Russian Finland in the west, across the tundra districts of the valleys of the Ob 

 and Yenisei, and not eastward of the Lena. In the winter it migrates southward 

 to the delta of the Volga and the southern shore of the Caspian, but it is rare 

 in Turkestan. 



Dr. O. Finsch says it is by no means uncommon near Obdorsk, in western 

 Siberia, in the autumn; and Herr K. G. Henke found it near Astrakan, in the 

 spring and autumn, also occasionally near Archapigel, in the former season. Modeste 

 Bogdanow states, (" The Ibis," 1883, p. 33), that it visits the Caspian in large flocks 

 in the autumn on migration, and there can be no doubt this great inland sea is 

 the chief winter resort of this species. It is said to have occurred as far to the 

 east as India. 



To the late Henry Seebohm belongs the honour of being the first English 

 ornithologist to become practically acquainted with the Red-breasted Goose in its 

 summer haunts, in those dreary tundras which, for hundreds of miles in breadth, 

 fringe the ice-bound shores of the Arctic Ocean. When in the valley of the 

 Yenisei, in 1877, in latitude 70^°, he gave the two mates of the schooner a com- 

 mission to collect eggs on the delta, and on one of the islands they found, and 

 shot on the nest, a Red-breasted Goose ; this nest contained two eggs, one of 

 which was unfortunately broken on his return journey ; on July 28th, he again 

 met with the species, a few miles south of the same locality, and saw several of 

 the birds, with their young broods, on the banks of the river. 



From information obtained by Mr. H. T. Pearson in Russian Lapland, in the 

 summer of 1895, ("The Ibis," 96, p. 210), it is not improbable it nests there; he 

 says his informant "assured us it bred occasionally near Lake Ukanskoe, but he 

 failed to find any trace of it." The fact, however, of its occasional appearance 

 near Archangel, in the spring, is suggestive of its nesting in European Arctic 

 Russia. 



In 1895, Mr. H. L. Popham was fortunate in getting four nests of seven, 

 seven, eight, and nine eggs, (of a creamy white colour), in the Yenisei country. 

 The females were in each case shot from the nests; all these were placed at the 

 foot of a clifi", occupied by a Peregrine or a Rough-legged Buzzard, (possibly for 

 protection from foxes), and well supplied with down. (The Ibis," 1897, pp. 96-100.) 



