THE AMERICAN STINT. 9 



tame, and seems to prefer small brackish and salt pools above high- water- mark, or 

 pools left by the tide, to the edge of the waves. We never get it in full winter 

 plumage in Britain. Its food consists of very minute insects and Crustacea, such 

 as entomostraca and the smaller amphipoda, with minute worms, etc. Seebohm 

 speaks of it as feeding on mosquitoes at the mouth of the Petchora, but I never 

 found either the adult insect (unpleasantly plentiful there) or the larvae amongst 

 the contents of this bird's oesophagus in Kolguiev. One I skinned there had 

 recently taken a crane-fly, four small beetles, one caddis fly fphryganeaj, and a 

 number of small, white, semi-transparent larvae, which feed in the willow buds ; 

 these, no doubt, had been picked up near the nest, independently of the real 

 feeding time a sort of hors-d'oeuvre. It is a very silent bird, uttering a low double 

 "cheep" in a high key, on the wing; the bird so tame at the nest, mentioned 

 above, never uttered the ghost of a note. 



Family SCOL OP A CID.4L. 



AMERICAN STINT. 



Tringa minutilla, VlEILL. 



THIS bird has thrice occurred in autumn as a casual vagrant on our coasts, 

 once in Cornwall, twice in Devonshire.* It breeds from Labrador to Alaska, 

 and winters as far south as Brazil. It is doubtful whether it ought not to be 

 united with T. damacensis, Horsfield, (subminuta, Middendorf), which breeds in 

 Eastern Siberia, and winters in Australia. The American Stint can be separated 

 from the Little Stint by its longer bill (ts inch long, as compared with T %), and 

 longer legs and toes (the middle toe and claws measuring A inch, while in the 



* The latest occurrence of the American Stint, in Britain, is identical with a specimen shot on the mud- 

 flats of the Northam Burrows, by Mr. W. B. Hawley, August i6th, 1892 ("Zoologist," 1892, p. 411). H.A.M. 



VOL. V T 



