BIRDS OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND 47 



eggs ; two common Sandpipers' Totanus hypoleucus, each with four, one 

 set fresh, the other with young birds formed ; a Reed- Bunting's with 

 six, incubated ; and a Wigeon's with seven eggs. The Reed-Bunting's 

 nest was in a small juniper bush on the edge of a swamp, and the 

 bird came back within two feet of me. Mosquitoes were getting 

 troublesome ; Einar had one eye nearly closed, and we had more lumps 

 under the skin than were pleasant. 



July 6th. — We started at 10 a.m. for Swan lake, as we wanted to 

 take some photos ; this was done under difficulties, for the light was 

 bad all day. The Swans still had only two eggs, so we brought them 

 to land and blew them. One was addled ; in the other, incubation 

 had commenced, but the embryo came out entire, showing a delicate 

 red tracery of the future bird with its long neck, head, and body. I 

 never remember to have blown an egg before in exactly the same 

 condition. Plate 18 was taken before the eggs had been touched. 

 Ivan persisted in his opinion that Eagles had taken the other Swan's 

 eggs, although we could not learn that he had ever seen such a thing 

 happen. The islands here looked ideal breeding-places for ducks, 

 and there were birds on the water, but not a nest could we find 

 although we searched every square yard of them all carefully. 



Then Ivan took us across the lake to what he at first said was an 

 Osprey's nest Pandion halia'ehis, but afterwards thought it might have 

 been an Eagle's. The nest was there certainly (see Plate 19), but 

 it had not been occupied for at least two years, and more probably 

 belonged to an Eagle than an Osprey, for the only remains of food 

 below were two breast-bones of birds, one of them a duck. As will 

 be seen from the relative sizes of my brother and the nest, the latter 

 was an immense structure of sticks which would have filled a lar^^e 

 cart. This plate is inserted on account of the tree. Before the 

 monks began to rebuild Pechenga monastery, in 1886, most of this 

 district was covered with trees of this and larger sizes, as shown by 

 their stumps ; but now only the crippled and deformed remain. 

 However, if the trees are gone, all the wild animals are not ; for 



