CHAP. XVII. BUFFON'S SKUA. 201 



silent, and then sat up to see if Harvie-Brown was satisfied 

 that she was on the nest. His point of sight was not so 

 favourable as mine ; and thinking I had given up the watch 

 as hopeless, he fired off his gun as a last resource, and came 

 up to me. As soon as he fired, both birds rose alnlost 

 exactly in front of the knoll upon which my telescope 

 pointed. Upon his arrival to learn what I had made out, 

 I told him the nest was forty or fifty yards in front of my 

 telescope. We fixed one of our guns pointing in the same 

 direction, so that we could easily see it. We then skirted 

 the intervening bog, got our exact bearings from the gun, 

 and commenced a search. In less than a minute we found 

 the nest with four eggs. As before, it was in a depression 

 on a ridge between two little lakes of black bog. In re- 

 turning to our boat we crossed a higher part of the tundra 

 near the river bank, and saw some golden plovers. The 

 eggs in this, our fifth nest, were considerably incubated, 

 which was probably the reason why the birds showed more 

 anxiety to lure us away. 



On our way back towards the river we crossed a marsh 

 where we saw some dunlins^ and secured one young in down. 

 On the higher part of the tundra, nearer the water's edge, 

 were several golden plovers : we shot one, and noticed a pair 

 of grey plovers amongst them. The two species were quite 

 easy to distinguish even at a good distance, without thehelp 

 of a glass. On a piece of low tundra, near the Petchora, 

 we came upon a large flock of Buffon's skuas. My com- 

 panion stopped to watch the grey plovers, and I marched 

 after the skuas. We had usually seen these birds hawking 



