LITTLE STINT. 211 



return to our quarters we found that our Samoyede servant had caught a 

 young Little Stint^ halfgrown, a very interesting bird. Like the young of 

 the Dunliuj the first feathers are those of summer plumage. In comparing 

 the young in down and halfgrown birds of the Dunlin with those of the 

 Little Stint, ^xc noted that the legs of the young Dunlin in down were pale 

 brown_, whilst those of the halfgrown and mature birds were nearly black; 

 the Little Stint, on the other hand, seems to have nearly black legs and 

 feet at all ages. 



The Little Stint is evidently much more nearly allied to the Dunlin than 

 to Temminck^s Stint, and ought to be called the Little Dunlin. The birds 

 are very similar in colour. The eggs of the Little Stint can hardly be 

 mistaken for those of Temminck^s Stint, but are in every respect miniature 

 Dunlin's eggs. The young in down of Temminck's Stint are quite grey 

 compared with the reddish brown of the young of the Dunlin. The young 

 in down of the Little Stint are still redder, especially on the sides and the 

 back of the neck. On the 27th of July Harvie-Brown walked over to the 

 other side of the little inland sea, and found two more nests of the Little 

 Stint, each containing four eggs. These nests were on different ground. 

 They were not on the tundra properly so called, but on the feeding-ground, 

 flat land covered with sand, upon which short grass and bunches of a thick- 

 leaved yellow -flowered plant were growing, abounding also with little lakes 

 and pools. The real tundra is about 150 yards from the water's edge in 

 this place ; and the feeding-ground lies between, scattered over with drift- 

 wood of all sorts. The behaviour of the birds at these two nests was 

 exactly the same as at the previous ones. 



In the following year Dr. Finsch obtained a nest with four eggs on the 

 Yalmal peninsula which are said to be those of the Little Stint ; but as he 

 afterwards asserts that some of the birds mentioned were incorrectly iden- 

 tified, no reliance can be placed on this statement. Henke assured me 

 that he had taken its nest near Archangel C^ Ibis,' 1882, p. 381). My 

 friend Mr. Edward Rae took a nest on the Kola peninsula, the eggs of 

 which appear to be those of the Little Stint. In 1880 my friend Collett 

 obtained a nest and eggs of the Little Stint near Kistrand in the Porsanger 

 Fjord, in the extreme north of Norway, a locality where both of us searched 

 in vain for it six years before. In the valley of the Yenesay, in 1877, I 

 obtained eggs which are unmistakably those of the Little Stint, of which 

 I shot several examples in lat. 71^°. East of the valley of the Yenesay the 

 Little Stint Avas found breeding by Middendorft' on the Taimur peninsula, 

 forty years ago. This is probably the eastern limit of its breeding-range*. 



* TaczanowsH includes the Little Stint in his Birds of Kamtschatka (' Bull. Soc. ZooL 

 France/ 1882, p. 397) on the faith of a single skin of a bird in first plumage, which was in 

 all probability a young example of T, minuta ruficollisj a common bird in Japan on 

 migration. 



p2 



