They usually make their first appearance on the shore of Norton Sound the last of August, and in a few days become very common. They sometimes remain up to the 12th of October, and I have seen them searching for food along the tide line when the ground was covered with 2 inches of snow. When feeding along the edges of the tide-creeks they may almost be knocked over with a paddle, and when a flock is fired into it returns again and again.
It is a regular fall migrant in the Pribilof Islands, between August 17 and November 9, where it associates in large flocks with the pectoral sandpiper on the seal-killing fields.
Doctor Stejneger (1885) writes:
Of this species I only obtained young specimens on Bering Island during the autumnal migration of 1882. From the middle of September and during the following three weeks they were observed both on the tundra near the great lake and on the rocky beach of the ocean searching for Gammarids. They were very shy and mostly single or in small families. Larger flocks were never seen.
From the Commander Islands the main flight continues on down the Asiatic coast, through Japan, China, and the Malay Archipelago, to New Zealand and Australia, where it spends the winter.
Winter.—W. B. Alexander writes to me that this is—
One of the commonest northern breeding birds which visits Australia. My earliest record of their arrival is August 31, 1925, at Cairns, North Queensland, and my latest record April 21, 1922, at Rockhampton, Queensland. From September to March they are to be found in small flocks throughout the coastal districts of Australia on the shores of estuaries and lakes and in fresh-water swamps. In October, 1922, I saw a flock of four on the open country near a dam on Alice Downs Station, near Blackall, central Queensland, a locality about 350 miles from the coast. Mr. D. W. Gaukrodger subsequently secured an excellent photograph of three of these birds at the same dam.
DISTRIBUTION
Range.—The sharp-tailed sandpiper breeds in the northeastern part of Asia—so far as known, in northeastern Siberia—wintering south to New Guinea, Tonga Islands, Australia, and New Zealand. Occurs in migration in Kamchatka, China, and Japan.