PHALAROPODID^ — THE PHALAEOPES — STEQANOPUS. 335 



anxiety for the safety of their eggs, limping or running with extended wings, uttering 

 a feeble and melancholy note. The young leave the nest shortly after they are 

 hatched, and run after their parents over the moss and along the edges of the small 

 ponds. They had all departed by the beginning of August. 



Mr. MacFarlane found this species breeding in great abundance in the Arctic 

 regions through which he passed, from the edge of the wooded country to the 

 shores of the Arctic Sea. In more than fifty instances in which he made notes of 

 its nests and eggs, he found the former to be mere depressions in the ground lined 

 with a few dried leaves and grasses, and in almost every instance placed near the edges 

 of small ponds ; the number of the eggs was almost invariably four. The nests were 

 seen from the 17th of June until into July, and in several instances perfectly fresh 

 eggs were found as late as July 5. They were tolerably numerous in the wooded 

 country, were also found in the Barrens wherever there were small lakes, and were 

 not less frequently seen at the very edge of the Arctic Sea and on the islands off the 

 coast. Sometimes the birds permitted the near approach of man without any noise 

 or special manifestations of uneasiness ; but at other times both parents would make 

 great outcries, and fly from tree to tree in order to draw the intruder away from the 

 nest. 



The eggs of this species average 1.10 inches in length by .80 of an inch in breadth. 

 Their ground-color is a greenish drab. The spots are much finer and more numerous 

 than in the eggs of the fuUcarius, and are of a sepia-brown. They are pyriform in 

 shape, and much smaller than those of the Eed Phalarope. Their nests were found 

 by Mr. Lockhart quite common on the Yukon. These eggs, collected in great num- 

 bers at various points on both the Yukon and Anderson rivers, exhibit great variations. 

 The ground-color ranges from the darkest olive-green to broAvnish olive, drab of va- 

 rious shades, to buff, and more rarely to a stone-gray. The spots also vary in size and 

 in their distribution, but are usually very numerous, and often confluent ; they vary 

 in their shades from a bistre so dark as to be almost black, to chocolate-brown, and 

 even lio-hter shades. 



^o-" 



Genus STEGANOPUS, Vieillot. 



Steganopus, Vieill. Eiic. Meth. 1823, 1106 (type, Phalaropus lohatus, WiLS., = P. JFilsoni, Sabine). 

 Holopodius, BONAP. Synop. 1828, 342. 



Char. Bill slender and subulate, with strictly l^asal nostrils, as in Lohi'pes ; web between 

 outer and middle toes not reaching to second joint, the lateral membrane of all the toes nar- 

 row and scarcely scalloped. 



Steganopus Wilsoni. 



WILSON'S PHALAROPE. 



? Trinrja glacialis, Gmel. S. N. I. ii. 1788, 675 (based on Plain Phalarope, Penn. Arct. Zool. II. 



1785, 495, no. 415 ; Lath. Synop. V. 173). 

 Phalaropus lobatus, " LiNX." WiLS. Am. Ora. IX. 1825, 72, pi. 73, fig. 3 (not of Linn.). 

 Phalaropus Wilsoni, Sabine, App. Frankl. Jouvn. 1823, 691. —Sw. & Rich. F. B. A. II. 1831, 405, 



pi. 69. — NuTT. Man. II. 1834, 245. —Auu. Orn. Biog. III. 1835, 400, pi. 254. — Cass, in Baird's 



B. N. Am. 1858, 705. — Baird, Cat. N. Am. B. 1859, no. 519. 

 Phalaropus (Holopodius) Wilsoni, Bonap. Synop. 1828, 342, no. 279. — Nutt. Man. II. 1834, 245. 

 Lohipes Wilsoni, AuD. Synop. 1839, 241 ; B. Am. V. 1842, 299, pi. 341. 

 Steganopus Wilsoni, Coues, Ibis, Apr. 1865, 158 ; Key, 1872, 248 ; Check List, 1873, no. 409 ; 2d 



ed. 1882, no. 602 ; B. X. W. 1874, 467. — RiDGW. Nom. N. Am. B. 1882, no. 565. 



