136 A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 



duties of incubation, although most of the birds that 

 I obtained at the nest were males. When the chicks 

 are two or three days old, both parents unite to care 

 for them, and become very noisy and rather wild when 

 the place is approached. One morning I watched a cock 

 stint whose nest held three moist chicks. One by one 

 he collected the broken eggshells and flew with them 

 to a spot some fifty yards away. This habit is general 

 among birds whose young are helpless in the nest, but 

 baby stints run almost as soon as they are hatched, and 

 it scarcely seemed worth the parents' trouble to carry 

 ofi" the egg-shells. 



Even before the chicks are fledged, the gregarious 

 instinct asserts itself, and the family party unites with 

 another family party until quite a large flock is formed. 

 These flocks linger on the sandy flats until the end of 

 August, when all the birds disappear before the easterly 

 gales as if they were swept away with a broom. Some- 

 times the stints mix with the dunlins that also haunt 

 such places, and it is very comic to see the two species, 

 like pocket and quarto editions of the same work, 

 feeding side by side. 



The Temminck's stints were also common at 

 Golchika, but they were to be found only along the 

 river-banks. For this reason they breed a week later 

 than Erolia minuta, for the shores of the river are 

 flooded at the end of June, and the birds must wait 

 until the water has subsided before they can begin to 

 lay. But one or two pairs nest early, and one of the 

 first clutches of eggs that I found at Golchika was that 

 of a Temminck's stint on a grave-mound in the little 



