BIRDS OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND 151 



June 20th. — We paid another visit to the marshes at Maselsid 

 to-day. On our arrival Musters disappeared for two hours, and at last 

 returned from the top marsh with a Bean-Goose, a male Spotted Red- 

 shank and his four young in down, one or two days old. This was a 

 dreadful blow, for it showed the time had nearly past when we could 

 hope to obtain one of the chief treasures we had travelled so far to 

 find. The fact was that 1903 proved to be a year absolutely devoid 

 of " luck," a most important factor in the success of an expedition. 

 There are years when good things are secured with an ease and 

 frequency which almost lead you to believe they are due to your own 

 ability ; and there are others when you may work most of the twenty- 

 four hours in each day and take nothing worth having. As far as I 

 know, only two Englishmen have taken the eggs of the Spotted Red- 

 shank, viz., Wolley and Meinertzhagen. Mr. Dresser quotes a letter 

 from the former to Hewitson in " Birds of Europe," vol. viii. p. 1 7 1 , in 

 which Wolley says : " The nests I have described were found quite by 

 good luck." Meinertzhagen, who found eggs of this bird on June 5 th 

 (p. 26), says nothing of the " luck," although I strongly suspect it was 

 present. Wolley's statement removes much of the sting from our 

 failure, and leaves only a hope for better fortune on our next en- 

 deavour to secure eggs of this bird. Musters said that the legs of the 

 Redshank were a brown-black with a touch of Indian red down the 

 sides when he picked up the bird immediately after shooting it, while 

 the male birds he saw at Kola had orange-red legs, and those he had 

 often seen in Norway on migration in August had also orange-red legs. 

 Meinertzhagen reports (p. 79) that the incubating bird was a male, so 

 possibly this change of colour has some protective advantage during 

 incubation. In all three cases when we secured young in down of this 

 species, the male bird was in charge and the female never appeared on 

 the scene. He had a black bill with a patch of red at the base of the 

 mandible ; the iris was nearly black. 



Musters had seen fourteen geese in one flock and four in another, 

 all Bean-Geese. A Grey-headed Wagtail whose nest we found on the 



