Tinki Dzong is a veritable bird sanctuary. The Dzong itself is a rambling fort covering a dozen or so of acres, and about its walls nest hundreds of birds--ravens, magpies, red-billed choughs, tree-sparrows, hoopoes, Indian redstarts, Hodgson's pied wagtails and rock-doves. In the shallow pool outside the Dzong were swimming bar-headed geese and ruddy shelducks, with families of young birds, all as tame as domestic poultry. A pair of white storks was seen here in June, but they did not appear to be breeding. In the autumn the lakes in this neighbourhood are the resort of large packs of wigeon, gadwall and pochard. The Jongpen explained to us that it was the particular wish of the Dalai Lama that no birds should be molested here, and for several years two lamas lived at Tinki, whose special business it was to protect the birds. [Illustration: JUNIPERS IN THE KAMA VALLEY.] Crossing over a pass of about 17,000 feet (Tinki La), the slopes gay with a little purple and white daphne (_Stellera_), said by the natives to be poisonous to animals, we came to a plain of a different character, miles of blown sand heaped here and there into enormous dunes, on which grows a yellow-flowering gorse. Here, near Chushar, we first met with rose-finches (Severtzoff's and Przjewalsk's) and the brown ground-chough (_Podoces humilis_): the last-named is a remarkable-looking bird, which progresses by a series of apparently top-heavy bounds, at the end of which it turns round to steady itself; in the middle of June it was feeding its young in nests at the bottom of deep holes in sand or old mud walls. Following up the valley of the Bhong-chu we crossed the river by a stone bridge near Shekar Dzong. Here we found a colony of white-rumped swifts nesting high up in cliffs and ruddy shelducks nesting in holes among the loose boulders below. Occasionally we saw a pair of black-necked cranes, which are said by the natives to breed near lakes a little to the North, but we had no opportunity of visiting them. The slopes of the hills facing South were covered with a very pretty shrub (_Sophora_) with blue and white flowers and delicate silvery grey leaves, and among the loose stones a small clematis (_C. orientalis_) was just beginning to appear. Groups of small trees, like a sea buckthorn, growing 15 to 20 feet high, indicate a gradual change in the climate as you go Westwards. Here also for the first time we began to find a few butterflies, of the genera _Lycaena_ and _Colias_.