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gunshot. Compared with the abundance of the Willow-Warblers they were decidedly rare ; 

 sometimes we did not see one in a morning's ramble, and at other times we heard three or four. 

 We did not succeed in obtaining more than three specimens at Ust Zylma. We had to shoot 

 them off the top of a spruce fir ; and sometimes they lodged in the branches or fell amongst the 

 tangled herbage and dead sticks at the foot, and were lost. 



" The 3rd, 4th, and 5th June we spent at Haberiki, about twenty-five miles down the river. 

 There we again met with the Siberian Chiffchaff frequenting the pine-forests. The country 

 round Haberiki was much flatter than that on the east bank of the Petchora, at Ust Zylma, and 

 the woods were much finer. Some of the larches were very old trees, towering above the spruce 

 and pines around them, weird haggard-looking trees, whose leafless tops were clothed with black 

 and grey lichen like a suit of rags, and torn and twisted by the winds into wild fantastic shapes, 

 and a grotesque contorted ramification, reminding one of a sketch by Gustav Dore. The extreme 

 summit of the loftiest of these larches was a favourite perch of the Siberian Chiffchaff. On our 

 first visit to Haberiki we shot one male ; and we succeeded in obtaining a second male on the 

 11th June in the same locality, on our voyage down the river. 



"We left Ust Zylma on the 10th June, our principal regret, after having, one might almost 

 say, wintered there since the 14th April, being that we were too early to obtain the nest and 

 eggs of this interesting bird. We hoped, however, to chance upon it in the pine-woods on the 

 banks of the Petchora as we sailed down ; but in this we were disappointed. Ust Zylma is about 

 three hundred miles from the sea. There are no islands of any importance for the first five-and- 

 twenty miles, as far as Haberiki. Then follows about a hundred miles of broad river, seldom 

 less than two miles wide, full of islands, in fact an elongated delta ; or if one wanted to coin a 

 name for this part of the great river, one might call it the iota of the Petchora, which the 

 arctic circle cuts almost in the centre. We landed on many of these islands, and in different 

 places on the shores. There was abundance of firs, pines, and larches in various localities, but 

 we neither saw nor heard any thing of the Siberian Chiffchaff. Then follows about a hundred 

 miles of real delta, ending with about seventy-five miles of submerged delta or lagoon, a series 

 of shoals and sand banks extending to the Golievski banks, between the promontory of Russki 

 Zavarot and the island of Varandai. The delta proper is full of low, flat islands, principally 

 under water whilst the ice is coming down the river. As the waters subside, these islands become 

 marshes covered over with low willows, full of lakes, and with here and there small open patches 

 of grass. These marshes soon dry up ; and grass or, where the willows are densest, Equheta soon 

 cover the mud under the trees. 



" From our previous observation we had taken it for granted that the Siberian Chiffchaff 

 was solely a frequenter of pine-forests, and that, now we had got beyond the region of any trees 

 but dwarf willows and creeping birch, we should see no more of it. To our no small astonish- 

 ment we found it comparatively abundant on the willow-swamps on the islands of the delta for 

 nearly the whole of the hundred miles of its extent. At Alexievka, near the middle of this 

 district, we had abundant opportunity of studying its habits. We shot half a dozen more birds, 

 all males except one. A second female we had already shot soon after entering the delta. We 

 did not meet with this bird in the willow thickets on the tundra ; but where these thickets came to 

 the edge of the river, as they occasionally did, we were almost sure to hear its familiar notes. 



