LEAST SANDPIPER. Pisobia minutilla (Vieillot)

Field characters.—A 'wader' of about size of Junco; bill slender, about 3/4 inch long. Feet and legs greenish, not black. Upper surface streaked brown and black; under surface white save for indistinct belt of ashy or drab across breast. Voice: A plaintive pe-et or wheet.

Occurrence.—Sparse transient. Recorded at Smith Creek, six miles east of Coulterville, in May, and at Mono Lake, east of the Sierra Nevada, in May and September. Runs over flat open margins of lakes or streams. In small active flocks.

The Least Sandpiper, the smallest of our shore birds, is so widely distributed elsewhere during the seasons of migration that it was no surprise to find it in the Yosemite section. At the mouth of Rush Creek on Mono Lake a trio of small sandpipers, believed to be of this species, was seen on May 6, 1916. In September, 1901, the species was identified positively at Mono Lake by Dr. W. K. Fisher (1902, p. 10).

On the west side of the mountains, on Smith Creek, 6 miles east of Coulterville, a Least Sandpiper was taken by Mr. Donald D. McLean on May 5, 1917. It is not unlikely that individual birds or flocks occur with some frequency along open shores elsewhere in the region.