LITTLE STINT. 389 



Petchora, determined to do all in their power to obtain 

 authentic information as to its nidification. It was not 

 until the 22ud July that they were successful, the locality 

 being on the tundras at Dvoinick, near the mouth of that 

 great river. The description and coloured illustrations of 

 four of the eggs were published in ' The Ibis,' 1876, 

 pp. 294-308 ; but the following abridged narrative is taken 

 from Mr. Seebohm's ' Siberia in Europe,' pp. 267-275 : — 



"I had not gone far before I heard our interpreter 

 Piottuch shouting in a state of great excitement. Harvie- 

 Brown was the first to come up ; and I joined them shortly 

 afterwards. I found them sitting on the ground with a 

 couple of Little Stints in down. I sat down beside them, 

 and we watched the parent bird as she was fluttering and 

 flying and running all round us, sometimes coming within 

 a foot of one of us. After securing the old bird we went on 

 a short distance, and Piottuch again made loud demonstra- 

 tions of delight. This time it was nest and eggs. The 

 nest was like that of most Sandpipers, a mere depression 

 in the ground, with such dead maroshka (cloudberry) leaves 

 and other dry material as was within easy reach, scraped 

 together to serve as lining. The position was on a com- 

 paratively dry extent of tundra, sloping from the top of the 

 little turf cliffs that rise from the lagoon down to the sand- 

 hills at the twin capes, between which the tide runs in and 

 out of a little inland sea. For perhaps a verst from each 

 twin cape, between the sand and the mouth of the little 

 inland sea, is an extent of dead flat land, covered over with 

 thick short grass, and full of little lakes, mostly very shallow 

 and filled with black or coffee- coloured mud with an inch or 

 two of brackish water upon it. Some of these pools are 

 covered with aquatic plants ; and others are open water. 

 These lakes and pools seem to be the real point of attrac- 

 tion ; and on their edges the Little Stints feed, in small 

 flocks of from half a dozen birds to a score, as they happen 

 to meet from the tundra. The large flock of perhaps a 

 hundred or more birds, which was occasionally seen, might 

 possibly have been last year's birds and not breeding ; but 



