34 BIRDS OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND 



next day, however, Charles saw the bird fly off, and we soon after 

 found the nest under a flat stone within a few feet of where the bird 

 sat the night before, and in a direct line between us. Although 

 seventy or eighty yards ofl", I expect I must have been too visible on 

 the sky-line, for it is often very difiicult to select a spot for watching 

 which commands the suspected area and aflbrds any shelter ; while to 

 be on the sky-line is generally fatal. 



A few Willow- Wrens were noted here to-day for the first time. 

 We turned in at 5 a.m., after seventeen hours of the most perfect 

 Arctic weather I ever remember, during which the sun had swung 

 round the heavens in an absolutely cloudless sky. 



June 2yth. — Such weather as we were now enjoying was too good 

 to waste in sleep, and we were out again at 9.30. The chief incident 

 to-day was another contest with Turnstones. We had noted a pair 

 in the day, but could make nothing of them at the time, and so 

 returned to the attack about 10 p.m. Charles and I having settled 

 about eighty yards apart, the birds also settled some hundred yards from 

 both of us, and for twenty minutes they never moved more than 

 a yard ; then they worked down gradually to a point midway between 

 us, the same bird always leading ; next they turned towards me, and 

 came on and on with many a zigzag, till it seemed the nest must be 

 underneath where I was ! For half-an-hour I sat almost without 

 winking. Once, when eight yards ofl", the bird fluttered down into a 

 hollow, but promptly reappeared, and came on to within six yards ; 

 then an old Puffin appeared from a burrow close by, regarded me 

 steadily with one eye, then turned the other, and not liking my 

 personal appearance, retired underground. This shook the Turnstone's 

 confidence somewhat ; and cold, cramp, and a desire to cough, made 

 the situation unbearable any longer. We searched all the area round 

 most carefully without result ; it was a bare stretch of peat with 

 scarcely a scrap of vegetation, and full of Puffin holes. We returned 

 the next morning and found the sentinel bird away feeding; the 

 other flew up close to our feet out of a Puffin hole in the hollow 



