CHARADRIIDAE 279 



with more tapering bill, breeds in Scandinavia, Kussia, and Siberia, 

 as well as from Alaska to Greenland, Iceland, Shetland, Orkney, 

 and the Hebrides; it rarely migrates to Western Europe, but reaches 

 India, New Guinea, Guatemala, and Peru. It has dark grey and 

 rufous upper parts, a white alar bar, throat, and belly, a grey breast, 

 and chestnut sides of the neck nearly meeting in front. By winter 

 the red tints have vanished and the white has increased. This 

 attractive little bird is often so tame that it will feed at the feet of 

 an intruder, or will even proceed to settle itself on its small and 

 rather deep nest, placed in some tuft of herbage ; the four eggs are 

 greenish-olive with black markings. When disturbed from them it 

 flies around with a shrill reiterated " tweet." It breeds in swamps 

 or by hill-lakes, and can swim well, but is not found so far out to 

 sea as the Grey Phalarope. P. (Steganopus) wilsoni, of temperate 

 North America, migrating as far as Patagonia and the Falklands, 

 is a larger, longer-billed bird, with a white nape and a black stripe 

 down each side of the head and neck. 



Tringa alpina, the Dunlin or Oxbird, is familiar to most 

 autumn visitors to our flatter coasts. Breeding not uncommonly 

 in Britain, though chiefly in the north, it is found in the colder parts 

 of both the Old and the New World, while exceptionally its eggs 

 have been obtained in Southern Spain ; in winter it extends to the 

 Canaries, Zanzibar, India, China, California, and the West Indies. 

 When first they arrive on the shore the large flocks are remarkably 

 tame, and allow even gunners to walk among them, as they 

 forage with head bent down over the mud or sand, or rise with a 

 cheeping cry, only to alight again at close quarters. The slight 

 nest, placed amongst heather or short grass on some moory hill- 

 pasture or seaside marsh, contains four greenish-white eggs with 

 brown or rufous spotting. The plumage exhibits a mixture of 

 rufous, grey, and black above, and is chiefly white beneath, with a 

 large, black, pectoral patch ; the decurved bill and the feet are black. 

 Most of the rufous and all the black disappear in winter. T. 

 minuta, the Little Stint, a miniature Dunlin with no black on the 

 breast, and a short, straight bill, visits Britain regularly on passage, 

 and breeds from the coasts of Northern Norway and Eussia to 

 Arctic Asia, a red- throated species or race {T. ruficolKs) occurring 

 east of the Lena ; in winter the birds reach South Africa, the 

 Indian Eegion, Australia, and Tasmania. T. minutilla, the darker 

 American Stint, with olive feet, which occupies the Arctic New 



