242 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



any birds in the drier and barer parts of the country. Even 

 the nests and young broods were always to be met with close to 

 water. The tundra, although for many miles around the river 

 its variations in altitude do not exceed 150 or 100 ft., has most 

 distinctive gradations in avifauna. To take an extreme case : 

 the highest points are occupied by Wheatears, Shore-Larks and 

 Dotterel ; the lower and more swampy levels by Red-throated 

 Pipits and Willow-Grouse; while the marshes are full of Divers 

 and Phalaropes. But in that flat country the margins between 

 one environment and another are so fine that you may occa- 

 sionally see a Dotterel breeding in the same situation as a Snipe 

 might choose ; and I have found a Willow-Grouse, which had 

 missed its habitat by perhaps thirty feet and was nesting in the 

 marsh herbage on the river bank. 



This nest, which is the one shown in the illustration, was 

 found six miles from Golchika. I spent the night of July 11th 

 in bird-nesting by the light of the midnight sun, and about 

 11 p.m., my companion, a Eusso-Siberian from the south, 

 flushed an "Abba," as the Samoyedes call the bird, from 

 thirteen eggs. She ran from the nest, feigning a broken wing 

 in true Partridge style, and Vassilli immediately fell into the 

 trap. He cocked his gun and ran after the bird, expecting each 

 instant to obtain a better shot. The old Grouse lured him thus 

 out of sight of the nest, and then boomed away unhurt. I never 

 saw a more effective hoax more successfully carried out, and 

 the dupe came back looking very sheepish, with his gun un- 

 discharged. 



I did not arrive at Golchika until the end of June, and as 

 the birds by then were already mated, I did not see anything of 

 the courtship of the species. From my own observation I 

 should say that the cock bird takes no part in incubation, 

 although he assists afterwards in the rearing of the young. 

 Frequently during the first part of July I flushed a solitary 

 cock bird from the willow on the tundra, the inference being that 

 the females were then upon the nest. The flight and alarm 

 note are so like those of Lagopus scoticus, that if I shut my eyes, 

 I could well have believed myself among the heather of a 

 Yorkshire moor instead of some thousands of miles away in the 

 heart of Arctic Asia. On the wing, however, the bird appears 



