336 THE MARCH-PAST OF THE MIGRANTS 



browed willow- warbler {Phylloscopus superciliosus, Gm.), 

 as I expected. There was quite a little party of these 

 diminutive creatures, and they were so tame after their 

 long journey that I watched them for a long time hopping 

 from twig to twig, diligently searching for food. I was often 

 within four feet of one of them, and could distinctly see its 

 white eye-stripe and the two pale bars across its wing. 



My attention was called away from these charming 

 little warblers by hearing a still more plaintive call- note, 

 which proceeded from a very nearly allied species almost 

 as small — the Siberian chiffchaff. During the day I 

 repeatedly heard the song — if song it may be called — 

 of this little black-legged willow-warbler, which I had 

 learned to recognise in a moment by hearing it so often 

 in the valley of the Petchora. I soon put its identity 

 beyond question by shooting a fine male, and discovered 

 that it had arrived in considerable numbers, as its note 

 was often heard during the day, but generally from some 

 pine-tree which was for the moment inaccessible, being 

 surrounded by snow too soft to bear my weight, even on 

 snow-shoes, and too deep to struggle through with any 

 chance of a successful pursuit. But interesting as the 

 arrival of these two rare warblers was to me, having 

 made this group my special study, I was even more 

 delighted to hear the unmistakable song of our common 

 European willow-warbler, a bird I had never dreamt of 

 meeting so far east. I shot a pair, and thus satisfactorily 

 demonstrated that some of our ornithological books have 

 been wrong in giving the Ural range as the eastern limit 

 of this well-known species during the breeding season. 

 It seems too bad to shoot these charming little birds, but 

 as the "Old Bushman" says, what is hit is history, and 

 what is missed is mystery. My object was to study 

 natural history, and one of the charms of the pursuit is to 



