VOL. X.] NOTES ON TEMMINCK'S STINT. 159 



and graceful waders is musical enough to deserve the 

 name of song. The sound is shrill and long sustained, 

 louder and less mechanical than the note of the Grass- 

 hopper-Warbler, more musical than the whirr of the 

 fisherman's reel, and may be likened more truly to the 

 croaking of many natterjack toads in chorus. The 

 duration of the trill was generally between twenty 



TEMMINCKS STINT: APPROACHING THE NEST. 

 (Photographed by Miss M. D. Haviland.) 



seconds and liaK a minute, sometimes less, delivered 

 breathlessly and without a pause, while the bird hung 

 suspended some forty feet in the air. When it was 

 finished the bird sometimes dropped back to earth, but 

 more often glanced away obliquely, either to give chase 

 to a rival, or else to hover in some new spot and begin all 

 over again. The trill was always more perfect and 

 more sustained when delivered thus on the wing, than 

 when, as sometimes happened, the bird was perched on 

 a tree trunk or block of ice. But perhaps I overrate the 



