PETCHORA 425 



and most triumphantly hurrah ! five Little Stints, 

 long looked for, found at last. But fancy Seebohm's dis- 

 appointment when he too saw the last man descend from 

 the beacon just as he got into the middle of the rarce aves 

 and had to return. 



Ah, Brother ' Ibises,' would that we had wings ! I fear 

 we should, though, change our natures and become great 

 hungry birds of prey, and a terror to all other fowls 

 of the air. 



The Stints were in flocks haunting a black, stinking 

 salt-marsh, an arm of the sea ; so, too, were the Curlew 

 Sandpipers. Beyond stretched a great sandy tract 

 covered with esparto-like (?) grass, and along the seashore 

 a bank of the same kind of ground stretches, we believe, 

 for miles in the direction of Cape Constantinovka. 



It is perhaps somewhat uncertain what these flocks 

 of Stints are whether they are breeding birds feeding 

 at a distance from their breeding quarters, or flocks of 

 young birds not yet breeding. These sandy tracts look 

 suggestive, but Seebohm found nothing breeding on them 

 but Ringed Plovers ; but of course he had only a hurried 

 half-hour or so to search, and saw nothing of the great 

 tract beyond the inlet.* t 



* The Little Stint has the outer tail feathers dusky ; in Tem- 

 minck's Stint they are white. 



f A Stint, Tringa subminuta of Middendorff, is mentioned in 

 Jerdon's ' Birds of India,' vol. iii. p. 691, as an inhabitant of China, 

 North-East India, and Japan ; and Jerdon says it very possibly is 

 confounded with the common species. It is said to differ in having 

 longer toes. I have one of these, but named by the synonym 

 damacensis, Horsf (see Gray's ' Hand List,' 10,313). Swinhoe men- 

 tions it (T. damacensis) as a species ('Ibis,' 1863, p. 123), but does 

 not compare it with T. minuta. 



Other references : In the ' Ibis,' 1873, described by Lord Walden, 

 quoting Pallas's original description, p. 317, of T. salince. 



In the ' Ibis,' 1872, p. 63, a note on T. minuta breeding in Waigats. 



T. minuta, a note from Middendorff s S.R. in Dresser, ' Birds of 

 Europe,' temporary vol. i. Eggs obtained. 



