SHAKP-TAILED STINT. 
margined with rufous at the tips ; the lateral upper tail-coverts white, with black 
shaft-lines ; middle tail-feathers dark brown, edged with rufous, the outer feathers 
pale brown with white margins ; throat, lores, and eyebrow whitish ; sides of 
face, sides of neck, fore-neck, and sides of breast buff with dark narrow shaft-lines ; 
middle of breast and sides of body uniform sandy-buff ; abdomen and under tail- 
coverts dull white, with dark shaft-streaks to the latter ; axillaries and under wing- 
coverts white ; the marginal coverts dark brown, edged with white, the greater 
under wing-coverts grey, tipped with white ; bill brown, base of lower mandible 
olive-brown ; iris brown ; tarsi and feet olive-yellow. Total length 215 mm. ; 
culmen 25, wing 128, tail 56, tarsus 30, 
Nest and Eggs. Unknown. 
Breeds in Siberia. 
Captain S. A. White writes : “ These birds move very quietly over the mud 
or shallow water, uttering a sharp caU aU the time. When congregated prior 
to migrating, they are in large flock. When they rise and wheel and turn, 
they show the dark brown of the back ; the hghter undersurface shine 
brightly in the sun.” 
Mr. Tom Carter says : “ The Sharp-tailed Stint was never noted at Point 
Cloates, but was always to be seen in the summer months at a mangrove 
swamp near the North-west Cape. It is also to be seen in flocks near Albany 
in February and March.” 
Mr. Charles Belcher reports : “ This bird is probably after the Snipe 
the best known of the migrants that visit Austraha, annually from Asia. It 
comes in flocks to Southern Victoria about September and leaves again in 
the following May. The birds are good eating and are commonly exposed 
for sale in poulterers’ shops in Melbourne. It is most plentiful near the 
sea, but I have found it occurring in large numbers in Goulbum Valley 
in Summer ; the attraction probably being the irrigation water.” 
Mr. J. W. Mellor observes : “ These birds were once very abundant at 
the Reedbeds, near Adelaide, South Australia, where they used to congregate 
in flocks, and feed in the swamps where the River Torrens looses itself in the 
marshes and reeds and flags. They fly very fast, and are a good mark for 
shooters, and I have seen a score or more knocked down at a shot fired into 
them as they pass along in a flock. They were very plentiful on Lakes 
Alexandria and Albert, and I saw large flocks of them there in the early 
Seventies, where they track along the water’s edge, and wade about the soft 
watery mud as the water receeds in the summer time. They arrive in South 
Austraha about October. 
“ Generally to be found in small parties of four or five, but as many 
sometimes as thirty, wading not like the JEgialitis, where the bare expanse 
of mud meets the water, but rather in backwaters where the swollen stream 
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