158 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. x. 



in this case it was very marked. It may have been that 

 some favourite food was fomid among the willows, 

 although the stomachs of such birds as I examined con- 

 tained nothing more distinctive than mosquito larvge 

 and in one case two little molluscs. But then there seems 

 no very clear reason why the birds should limit themselves 

 to the willows by the river, and should not visit the 

 willows on the tundra. On the other hand it may be 

 that their chosen habitat is by rimning water, but in that 

 case why should they not breed in the sphagnum swamps 

 by the river bank ? The fact remains that, in the 

 Golchika district, willows and running water mean 

 Temminck's Stints : either or neither means none ; and 

 this rule held good, not only by the Yenesei, but far up 

 the sources of the little nameless rivers that rise out on 

 the tundra. 



I do not presume to offer an opinion on this curious 

 restriction of the local range of the species, unless it is 

 permissible to suggest that if we knew more of the history 

 of this bird's distribution we might accept the explanation 

 offered in analogous but more familiar cases by Mr. S. E. 

 Brock {British Birds, Vol. VIII., p. 35). " The habitat 

 wherein breeding is accomplished is the most primitive 

 environment. . . . The bird's present distribution is 

 based on and limited by a breeding habitat, the tjrpe of 

 which is fixed by ancestral experience, modified only in 

 subordinate degree by present conditions." In this 

 connection I cannot help remarking that in the field, in 

 colour of plumage, both nestling and adult, in language, 

 in tricks of gait, and, on the lower Yenesei at all events, 

 in habitat, Temminck's Stint more nearly resembles a 

 Sandpiper (e.j/., Tringa hypoleucus) than the Little Stint 

 (and thus the Dunlins) with which it is associated in 

 scientific and English nomenclature. 



To a country that has only four song birds — two 

 Buntings, a Pipit and the Shorelark — I am inclined to 

 grant a fifth and include Temminck's Stint. Certainly 

 in the pairing season the trilling of these most vociferous 



