Page:From Kulja, across the Tian Shan to Lob-Nor (1879).djvu/144

Rh In two or three days the number of ducks was diminished by one half. For nights in succession we heard the noise of the departing flocks. They rarely started in the daytime, but at night they sped onwards without turning to right or left. By the 10th or 12th of March the chief exodus was over; the birds had left Lob-nor as quickly as they had come. Again the lake was deserted by the bulk of its February visitants; but the few that remained to nest now began living in a more spring-like fashion. The call-notes of ducks and geese, the shrieks of gulls, the booming cry of the bittern, and the whistle of the coot were more frequent. In the evenings the reeds resounded with the crake of the water-rail. These were all; no other songsters enlivened the dreary marshes of Lob-nor.

During the whole of March the arrival of new birds was very deficient both in variety and numbers.® Vegetation, notwithstanding the warm weather which had set in, slumbered as in winter. Not till the very last days of March did the young green shoots of the reeds begin to spring up and

In the first half of this month there appeared Orut cinerea, Lanius UahellinuSy Buteo vulgaris, Pelicanus crispus, Anas querquedula, Saxicola leucomela, Mergiu merganser, Fodiceps minor, JE^lites cantiantu. In the latter half of March arrived Stumus vulgaris F Oypselus murariuSy Sylvia currueaf Numenius arquatus, Milvus ater, Saxicola airigularis, Hirundo rmtica, Ciconia nigra, Cyanecula ccerulecula, and Hgpsibates himantopus.