CHAP. xix. TEMMINCK'S STINT. 237 



dunlin, and the Temminck's stint a small Terek or common 

 sandpiper. The little stint is dark brown, almost black, 

 each feather edged with pale chestnut, or rich umber-brown. 

 The other species is grey, with something like a touch of 

 green, and the feathers have pale tips, rich enough sometimes 

 to be called a grey yellow-ochre ; those on the bastard wing 

 appoach a grey umber-brown. The colour of the shaft of 

 the first primary, and the comparative distinctness of the 

 white edges of the secondaries, supposed in the Temminck's 

 stint to form a second white bar in flight, appear exactly the 

 same in both species. 



The five little stints in our possession proved to be all 

 males. Temminck's stints were very common at Alexievka. 

 They were breeding abundantly : sometimes we found them 

 in single pairs ; sometimes almost in colonies ; but we had 

 never met with flocks of these birds since leaving the neigh- 

 bourhood of Habariki. Those that we had come upon after- 

 wards had never failed to show us by their ways that we were 

 intruding upon their breeding quarters. When Harvie-Brown 

 visited Archangel, in 1872, he found Temminck's stints breed- 

 ing on one of the islands of the delta of the Dvina. This was 

 probably not far from the southern limit of their migration. 

 He also continually observed this species in other localities-, 

 congregating in small flocks together, and evidently not 

 breeding. These might have been the birds of the preceding 

 year. If, as it is pretty well established, few sandpipers 

 breed until the second year, and the young birds flock, 

 during their first summer, somewhere near the southern 

 limit of the breeding- stations, it might also be augured that 



