254 ALLEN'S NATURALIST'S LIBRARY. 



attract me still farther; she shuffled along the ground as if lame, 

 she dropped her wings, as if unable to fly, and occasionally 

 rested on her breast, quivering her drooping wings and spread 

 tail, as if dying. I threw one of my gauntlets at her, thinking 

 to secure her without damage, but she was too quick for me. 

 Piottuch then fired at her, and missed. He followed her 

 for some distance, but she kept just out of range, and finally 

 flew away. We waited about a quarter of an hour at the nest, 

 talking and making no effort to conceal ourselves, when she 

 flew straight up and alighted within easy shot, and I secured 

 her. The Little Stint seems to be a very quiet bird at the 

 nest, quite different from Temminck's Stint. When you invade 

 a colony of the latter birds, especially if they have young, the 

 parents chase you from the spot, flying wildly round and round 

 and crying vociferously, often perching on a stake or a tree, or 

 hovering in the air and trilling. We observed none of these 

 habits in the Little Stint. So far as we saw, only the female takes 

 part in incubation, and only the female is seen near the nest." 

 Nest. Mr. C. E. Pearson, who accompanied his brother's 

 expedition to the Arctic Ocean in 1895, has kindly sent me the 

 following account of the nesting of the species on Kolguev : 

 " My notes on the breeding habits of the Little Stint were made 

 last summer on the Island of Kolguev, where we had the rare 

 good fortune to take fifteen clutches of eggs, the first being found 

 on July the 6th and the last on the day of our departure, July 

 1 5th; each clutch, with two or three exceptions, consisting of 

 four eggs. The nest, as is usual in this tribe, is a very slight 

 affair, a small cup-shaped hollow scratched in the sod, and very 

 sparingly lined with a few dead leaves of Arctic willow, &c. 

 The favourite position appeared to be the lower part of the 

 grassy bank, which sloped down to the river Gobista, but the 

 bird is not at all particular on this point, as we found nests in 

 low boggy ground, in the middle of a clump of Arctic sallow 

 growing six or eight inches high, and in one case right up 

 on the bare tundra, without any protection or a scrap of vege- 

 tation near it. All the nests, however, agreed in one point, 

 viz., that they were within fairly easy reach of tidal water, the 

 flats left bare by the receding tide being the birds' favourite 

 feeding-ground ; above the tidal limit their place is taken by 

 Temminck's Stint. 



