A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
stint
A stint is a very small sandpiper, the smallest of the wading birds, weighing around an ounce. Several species breed on Arctic tundra and winter on coasts and wetlands across Africa, Asia, and Australasia. They feed in tight flocks on mud and wet sand, picking rather than probing, and they are among the harder groups of birds to identify because the differences between species are matters of leg color, wing projection, and feather edging.
Etymology
The word is Middle English and its origin is not settled, though it may be connected to the ordinary English stint meaning to limit or cut short, applied to the size of the bird. In North America the same birds are called peeps, from the call, which is a straightforwardly better name.
Notes
The little stint and its relatives make migrations of extraordinary length for their size, some flying from Siberia to southern Africa. Their feeding rate on a mudflat is high enough to be a significant control on invertebrate populations, and estuaries that look empty at a glance can be holding tens of thousands of them working the tideline.