1624 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 3 



This quotation is slightly misleading in that the bird seldom begins 

 the song during the preliminary, upward flight. 



The behavior of singing birds I witnessed at Cape Thompson did 

 not differ from that Drury recorded (1961) on Bylot Island, which is 

 briefly as follows: males occasionally sing from conspicuous perches 

 on the ground, but the usual song is given in a flight during which the 

 male rises to a height of 20 to 40 feet and then settles slowly to the 

 ground singing several songs in rapid succession. During windy 

 periods the birds often sing several songs while hovering overhead. 

 Drury notes that "Songs started with a ringing and metallic zing, 

 followed by a rolling and rapidly descending zizeleeaw; then a rolling, 

 sustained zizelee-ee (ending with the highest note of the song ee), and 

 closed with another rapid rolling and descending zizeleeaw." Drury 

 also uses the syllables see, serilee-aw, serilee-ee, serileeaw to describe 

 the rapidly descending flight song, and these seem to me excellent 

 word representations of the sounds. He also reports a "whisper" 

 song containing the same elements as the full song, but usually shorter, 

 and given only by the male when in close company with the female 

 before the start of nest-building. This I never heard at Cape Thomp- 

 son where, over a two-year span, full song began as early as May 5 

 and continued as late as June 28. 



The peak of song seems to occur during the period of greatest 

 territorial activity, prior to the laying of eggs. Singing diminishes 

 conspicuously after the female begins incubating. The last songs of 

 the season, heard on July 21 and again on August 12, were weak and 

 abbreviated. 



The alarm note sounds to me like a plaintive peer and is given near 

 the nest or elsewhere on the territory when the birds are disturbed. 

 The same call is given by members of a flock when they are pressed 

 into flight. Salomonsen's (1950) descriptions of these and other 

 notes for the birds on Greenland are applicable as well to the Alaskan 

 members of the species and are generally more accurate representations 

 than other published versions. He states: 



The common call-note, used at the breeding-place, is a soft melodious ee-yii or 

 only yii or chiip, uttered by both sexes on the ground and during flight, but more 

 slurred and not so frequently by the female. Another note is a bunting-like 

 dir-rit, uttered also on ground and in flight, used as a contact-note, during flight 

 often as a lengthened, chirping dirrirrirrirrit. A short and more harsh pirrh 

 uttered by the male on the wing is sometimes heard, as well as an exited sparrow- 

 like note during pursuing-flight. The call-note and the contact-note are often 

 combined during flight, alternating like dit-il-dit-u. Birds moving about in 

 flocks in the autumn use chiip when alighting, when foraging and at rest, dir-rit 

 when rising and in flight. 



Almost as memorable as the full song of the male are the alarm 

 notes sometimes given by the female when she is startled from the 



