VOL. x] NOTES ON TEMMINCK'S STINT. 165 



uttering a sharp alarm note. More than one bird is always 

 present on these occasions ; but whether these are both 

 parents, or whether, as is the case with many of these 

 northern waders, two or three broods congregate, each 

 contributing an adult to the flock, T was never able to 

 satisfy myself. 



The half-grown chicks can swim very nimbly if hard 

 pressed. Twenty big sledge dogs roamed about the- 

 Golchika island, and used to make concerted raids into 

 the swamps, Avhere they hunted Ruffs, Stints, and 

 Phalaropes in the cotton-grass, and I suspect they took 

 heavy toll of the young broods. 



The young and old birds flocked during August, but 

 never in such numbers as did the Little Stints, and I 

 never saw them associate with the mixed parties of 

 Ringed Plover, Little Stints, and Dunlins that fed on the 

 sandflats. 



The departure for the south was rather gradual. T 

 never identified any of this species flying up the river, and 

 there was no very marked movement to be recorded, 

 though the majority of the birds had left by August 25th. 

 The bulk of the Little Stints also left round about that 

 date, though in my notes I record that I saw a few birds 

 up to the end of tlie month, but I have no record of 

 Temminck's Stint after the 27th of August. 



