364 FULL SUMMER AT LAST 



we rowed past this willow cover, I heard a familiar song, 

 and pointed the bird out to my companion ; it was 

 wheeling round in circles overhead, occasionally descend- 

 ing into the willows. I recognised it to be the Siberian 

 pipit which Harvie- Brown and I had discovered in the 

 Petchora. Some hours after we first sighted it, I was 

 lucky enough to get within shot of one singing in a 

 willow-tree ; I had, of course, expected to find this bird 

 in this locality, as it had already been shot east of the 

 Lena. 



My fourth important observation that morning was, 

 however, the most valuable of all ; in fact, by it I attained 

 one of the special objects of my journey. A quarter of 

 an hour before we left the opposite shore, as I was 

 making my way down the hill to the boat amongst 

 tangled underwood and fallen tree-trunks, rotten and 

 moss-grown, a little bird started up out of the grass at my 

 feet. It did not fly away, but flitted from branch to 

 branch within six feet of me. I knew at once that it 

 must have a nest near at hand, and in a quarter of a 

 minute I found it, half hidden in the grass and moss. It 

 •contained five eggs. The bird was the Little bunting. 

 It hovered about so close to me, that to avoid blowing 

 it to pieces I was obliged to leave the nest and get a 

 sufficient distance away. It seemed a shame to shoot the 

 poor little thing, but the five eggs were, as far as I knew, 

 the only authentic eggs of this species hitherto obtained, 

 therefore it was necessary for their complete identification. 

 The nest was nothing but a hole made in the dead 

 leaves, moss, and grass, copiously and carefully lined with 

 fine dead grass. I can best describe the eggs as minia- 

 ture eggs of the corn-bunting. 



The forest on that side of the river was principally 

 larch, spruce, pine or cedar, and the trees were larger 



