FETCH OR A 425 



and most triumphantly — hurrah ! — five Little Stints, 

 long looked for, found at last. But fancy Seebohm's dis- 

 appointment when he too saw the last man descend from 

 the beacon just as he got into the middle of the rarm aves 

 and had to return. 



Ah, Brother ' Ibises,' would that we had wings ! I fear 

 we should, though, change our natures and become great 

 hungry birds of prey, and a terror to all other fowls 

 of the air. 



The Stints were in flocks haunting a black, stinking 

 salt-marsh, an arm of the sea ; so, too, were the Curlew 

 Sandpipers. Beyond stretched a great sandy tract 

 covered with esparto-like (?) grass, and along the seashore 

 a bank of the same kind of ground stretches, we believe, 

 for miles in the direction of Cape Constantinovka. 



It is perhaps somewhat uncertain what these flocks 

 of Stints are — whether they are breeding birds feeding 

 at a distance from their breeding quarters, or flocks of 

 young birds not yet breeding. These sandy tracts look 

 suggestive, but Seebohm found nothing breeding on them 

 but Kinged Plovers ; but of course he had only a hurried 

 half-hour or so to search, and saw nothing of the great 

 tract beyond the inlet.* f 



■■'• The Little Stint has the outer tail feathers dusky ; in Tem- 

 minck's Stint they are white. 



i A Stint, Tringa suhminuta of Middendorff, is mentioned in 

 Jerdon's ' Birds of India,' vol. iii. p. 691, as an inhabitant of China, 

 North-East India, and Japan; and Jerdon says it very possibly is 

 confounded with the common species. It is said to differ in having 

 longer toes. I have one of these, but named by the synonym 

 damacensis, Horsf (see Gray's ' Hand List,' 10,313). Swinhoe men- 

 tions it {T. damacensis) as a species ('Ibis,' 1863, p. 123), but does 

 not compare it with T. minuta. 



Other references : In the ' Ibis,' 1873, described by Lord Walden, 

 quoting Pallas's original description, p. 317, of T. salince. 



In the ' Ibis,' 1872, p. 63, a note on T. mimita breeding in Waigats. 



T. minuta, a note from Middendorff's S.E. in Dresser, ' Birds of 

 Europe,' temporary vol. i. Eggs obtained. 



