LECT SENT 297 
Flight—On the wing the Little Stint moves with re- 
markable velocity, cleaving the air often in a rather straight 
course, and reminding one not a little of a Sand-Martin in 
rapid flight. I have seen this bird ascend to a consider- 
able height, fly out to sea, descend suddenly, and then 
skim so close to the breakers, that with each downstroke 
the wings almost touched the surface of the water. 
Food.—Small crabs, worms, shrimps, insects (including 
flies), tiny shell-fish, and the seeds of plants, are eaten. 
Votce.—The voice, heard on the wing, sounds as a 
highly pitched delicate twitter, resembling the syllables 
twicky-twick, twicky-twick. In autumn, when the birds 
are in flocks, their call-note resembles the confused chirp- 
ing of grasshoppers (Saunders). 
Nest.— The Little Stint breeds on wild moor-lands, 
depositing its eggs in a slight depression in the soil, lined 
with a few fragments of withered herbage. The four eges 
resemble those of the Dunlin in ground-colour and mark- 
ings, but are smaller. Incubation begins about the middle 
of June. Like the Dunlin this species sits closely on its 
eggs, and when the young are running about, it will pretend 
to be wounded to atiract attention. 
Geographical distribution.—The Little Stint breeds in 
Northern and Arctic Kurope and Asia. Middendorff found 
it nesting in 1843 along the ''aimyr River in Siberia, and 
this is the first record known of the discovery of its 
breeding-haunts (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1861, p. 398). However, 
vag July 1875 Messrs. Harvie-Brown and Seebohm were 
the first to take the eggs in Hurope, near the mouth of 
the Petchora” (Saunders). On migration in spring and 
autumn this bird visits the coasts of Kurope and Temperate 
Asia, reaching South Africa and Southern Asia in the cold 
months. Numbers sojourn during the winter in North 
Africa, and, to a less extent, in Southern Europe. 
DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERS. 
PLUMAGE. Adult male nuptial.—Top of head, hind-neck, 
back, scapulars, and inner secondaries, black, the feathers 
being edged and spotted with buff; outer secondaries and 
wing-coverts, chiefly brownish with white edgings; primaries, 
dusky- brown ; tail, greyish, the central feathers being darker 
than the outer ones, like those of the Dunlin; upper tail- 
coverts, chiefly dark brown; wing, crossed by a white bar; 
