LITTLE STINT. 
% 
Mr. Tom Carter says odd birds could be seen at Point Cloates, West 
Australia, at aU times of tbe year. 
Mr. Charles Belcher writes : “ This species makes its annual appearance 
along the southern shores of Victoria oftener not later than the end of July, 
after an absence of barely three months. Enormous flocks may be observed 
during the Australian Spring and Summer, the pure white breasts of the 
little birds showing like a bright flash as the flock wheels in the air. In 
general appearance on the wing it closely resembles Mgialitis ruficapillus^ but 
the flocks of P. ruficollis are usually much larger and fly to a greater height.” 
Mr. J. W. Mellor records : “ This pretty little sandpiper is fairly abundant 
in South Australia, frequenting open marshy swamp-land and sea-beaches when 
the tide is low, going in flocks of scores, and feeding on very small swamp 
and marine insect life. I have shot them at the Reedbeds near Adelaide, 
while waiting for ducks on a moonlight night. They fly very noiselessly, and 
alight on the water’s edge like a little flock of moths, and start to run along 
the muddy water’s edge, keeping in a little flock all the time. I have noted 
them in the open beach at the mouth of the Port Adelaide River, along the 
beach on the eastern side of St. Vincent’s GuK. I also saw them very 
plentiful on the Coorong in October, 1896, and again a year or two later Avhen 
visiting there.” 
“ The small parties of these birds that visit our salt-marshes [in Formosa] 
rise altogether, when disturbed, with a loud twittering note. When one is 
wounded, its companions fly round and about it to try and render it assistance, 
in the manner of Curlews, and often keep by the fallen until it dies, thus too 
frequently endangering their own lives. I have not observed this sympathy 
with the distress of its feUows displayed by any other species of TringaP*^ 
“ Passes the Foochow district in April and May, and is very abundant. 
It returns in September.”t ^ 
“ This species arrives at Bering Island late in May in rather large flocks, 
but does not stay long. None were met with during the whole summer, 
until, in the first half of September, they took a short rest on the shores of 
our island before commencing their long travel to the southward.”} 
“ According to Dybowski and Godlewsld this bird is not rare, and arrives 
in the neighbourhood of the Rivers Onon and Argoun in Dauria in the middle 
of May, and in Autumn it is found during the whole of September. 
“ We have found it in August in the island of Saghaline on the shores 
of the bay of N3dskoi, where at the end of the month they are found in 
enormous flocks ” [Nikolski]. (Taczanowski.) 
* Swinhoe, Ibis 1863, p. 414. 
f La Touche, ib. 1892, p. 498. 
J Stejneger, Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 29, p. 119, 1885. 
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