154 BIRDS OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND 



storeys, and a number of Lapp huts, many of the last much decayed. 

 The three houses have been erected by Government for the use of the 

 seamen on their annual journeys north and south. These men leave 

 their ships in the fjords on the northern coasts of the country, and 

 sledge overland to their homes in the towns round the White Sea, to 

 spend the winter with their families. They return north to their 

 ships in March, and are thus able to get to sea about two months 

 earlier than if they waited for the ice in the White Sea to break up. 

 At the time of our visit the whole place was uninhabited. 



A large marshy tract extends for nearly a mile from these houses 

 to the lake below. Birds were numerous here, Wood-Sandpipers, 

 Whimbrel, Golden Plover, Greenshanks, &c., objecting strongly to our 

 disturbing them ; but we had travelled over more than half its length 

 before we heard the note of the bird we had come for. A male Bar- 

 tailed Godwit, in his handsome breeding plumage, was sitting on a 

 pine-tree, giving out loud angry notes. I shall not attempt to repro- 

 duce them, because most of the efforts to print intelligibly the notes 

 of birds have appeared to me such dismal failures I prefer not to join 

 the band of interpreters. This bird behaved very differently to those 

 we had seen at Maselsid, and it was at once quite clear that he was 

 part owner in a nest not far off; but where ? We tried for some 

 time to discover what particular section of the marsh he was most 

 interested in ; this failed utterly, partly through preconceived ideas of 

 what his behaviour ought to be. Then Musters devoted himself 

 to watching that bird, while I took a part of the marsh I thought the 

 most likely to contain the nest, and searched it yard by yard, and 

 our two men wandered hopelessly about. After this had gone on for 

 an hour and a half the Russian went off into the wood near ; and on 

 his return, as he emerged from the fringe of small trees forming the 

 edge of the wood, he nearly stepped on the hen bird, which rose with 

 cries even louder and more angry than those of the male, from 

 four young, hatched certainly within the last twelve hours, for the 

 remains of the egg shells still lay in the nest. And we had come for 



