LITTLE STINT 297 



Flight. On the wing the Little Stint moves with re- 

 markable velocity, cleaving the air often in a rather straight 

 course, and reminding one not a little of a Sand-Martin in 

 rapid flight. I have seen this bird ascend to a consider- 

 able height, fly out to sea, descend suddenly, and then 

 skim so close to the breakers, that with each downstroke 

 the wings almost touched the surface of the water. 



Food. Small crabs, worms, shrimps, insects (including 

 flies), tiny shell-fish, and the seeds of plants, are eaten. 



Voice. The voice, heard on the wing, sounds as a 

 highly pitched delicate twitter, resembling the syllables 

 twicky-twick, twicky-twick. In autumn, when the birds 

 are in flocks, their call-note resembles the confused chirp- 

 ing of grasshoppers (Saunders). 



Nest. The Little Stint breeds on wild moor-lands, 

 depositing its eggs in a slight depression in the soil, lined 

 with a few fragments of withered herbage. The four eggs 

 resemble those of the Dunlin in ground-colour and mark- 

 ings, but are smaller. Incubation begins about the middle 

 of June. Like the Dunlin this species sits closely on its 

 eggs, and when the young are running about, it will pretend 

 to be wounded to attract attention. 



Geographical distribution. The Little Stint breeds in 

 Northern and Arctic Europe and Asia. Middendorff found 

 it nesting in 1843 along the Taimyr River in Siberia, and 

 this is the first record known of the discovery of its 

 breeding-haunts (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1861, p. 398). However, 

 "in July 1875 Messrs. Harvie-Brown and Seebohm were 

 the first to take the eggs in Europe, near the mouth of 

 the Petchora" (Saunders). On migration in spring and 

 autumn this bird visits the coasts of Europe and Temperate 

 Asia, reaching South Africa and Southern Asia in the cold 

 months. Numbers sojourn during the winter in North 

 Africa, and, to a less extent, in Southern Europe. 



DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERS. 



PLUMAGE. Adult male nuptial. Top of head, hind-neck, 

 back, scapulars, and inner secondaries, black, the feathers 

 being edged and spotted with buff; outer secondaries and 

 wing-coverts, chiefly brownish with white edgings ; primaries, 

 dusky-brown ; tail, greyish, the central feathers being darker 

 than the outer ones, like those of the Dunlin ; upper tail- 

 coverts, chiefly dark brown ; wing, crossed by a white bar ; 



