STINT—STOCK-DOVE QI5 
STINT (akin to Stunt), a common name for any of the smaller 
SANDPIPERS (p. 812), but especially for the DUNLIN (p. 172). By 
British authors it is almost restricted to Tringa iminuta and T. 
temmincki, both of which occur yearly on our coasts.! 
STITCH-BIRD, one of the most interesting of the Ieliphagide 
(HONEY-EATER, p. 428) of New Zealand, so called from uttering a 
“sharp clicking sound like the striking of two quartz stones together,” 
which “has a fanciful resem- 
blance to the word stitch,” the 
Pogonorniscincta of ornithology. 
The male is remarkable for 
the tuft of white feathers stand- 
ing out behind each eye in 
contrast with his glossy black 
head and neck, to which suc- 
ceeds a band of deep yellow, 
narrow in front but broadening at the sides, while the same 
colour is shewn in some of the wing-feathers ; but for the most 
part the rest of the plumage is olive-brown variegated with dark 
streaks and a white patch on the cubitals. The species, which 
was only made known in 1839, seems to have had a limited range 
on the North Island of New Zealand, where it is believed to be 
now extinct, and though a small number may still exist on some of 
the off-lying islets, its extirpation can be only a question of a few 
years, yet its cause one can but guess. However, before the days 
of colonization, the bird seems to have been a good deal persecuted 
for the sake of its fine yellow feathers, which were sought by the 
Maories to deck the robes of their chiefs, even as those of the 
DREPANIS (p. 166) were in the Sandwich Islands (cf Buller, 
B. N. Zeal. ed. 2, i. pp. 101-105). 
STOCK-DOVE (cf. p. 163), the Columba wnas of ornithologists, 
most likely so called from the mistaken belief in its being the origin 
of the domestic Pigeon, just as for a similar reason STOCK-DUCK 
is a local name for the common Wild Duck (p. 169); but some 
suppose that the Dove has its name from its habit of frequently 
breeding in the stocks of trees, and it must be allowed that the 
German Holztaube and some other cognate names in Teutonic 
tongues, to say nothing of STOCK-EIKLE (a corruption of Stock- 
HiIckKWALL and itself corrupted into Stock Eagle) a local name of a 
WoopPECKER, favour that view. 
Poconornis. (After Buller.) 
1 The first authenticated eges of the latter were probably taken by Schrader 
in East Finmark in 1842 (Jowrn. fiir Orn. 1853, p. 808), though its breeding- 
ground was found there in 1840 by Von Middendorff (Beitr. Kenntn. Russ. Reichs, 
viii. p. 207), who in 1843 discovered in the Taimyr peninsula the nest of the 
former (Sib. Reise, ii. 2, p. 221, and Proce. Zool, Soc, 1861, p. 398). 
