42 BULLETIN 142, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Other observers have reported avocets as feeding on grasshoppers, 

 predaceous diving beetles, crickets, centipedes, weevils, small snails, 

 sea slugs, small crustaceans, and even small fishes. 



Behavior. — Avocets are at all times tame and unsuspicious, very- 

 solicitous and aggressive on their breeding grounds, quiet and indif- 

 ferent at other times, showing only mild curiosity. Their demonstra- 

 tions of anxiety on their nesting grounds, particularly if they have 

 young, are amusing and ludicrous. Utterly regardless of their own 

 safety, they meet the intruder more than half way and stay with 

 him till he leaves. W. Leon Dawson (1909) has described it very 

 graphically, as follows: 



The mother bird had flushed at a hundred yards, but seeing our position she 

 flew toward us and dropped into the water some 50 feet away. Here she lifted 

 a black wing in simulation of maimed stiffness, and flopped and floundered away 

 with the aid of the other one. Seeing that the ruse failed, she ventured nearer 

 and repeated the experiment, lifting now one wing and now both in token of 

 utter helplessness. After a while the male joined her, and we had the painful 

 spectacle of a crippled family, whose members were uttering most doleful cries 

 of distress, necessitated apparently by their numerous aches and breaks. Once, 

 for experiment's sake, we followed, and the waders flopped along in manifest 

 delight coaxing us up on shore and making off through the sagebrush with 

 broken legs and useless wings. But we came back, finding it better to let the 

 birds make the advances. The birds were driven to the very limit of frenzy, 

 dancing, wing trailing, swaying, going through last convulsions and beginning 

 over again without regard to logical sequence, all in an agony of effort to 

 divert attention from those precious eggs. As time elapsed, however, the 

 color of the play changed. Finding that the appeal of cupidity was of no avail, 

 the birds appeared to fall back upon the appeal to pity. Decoying was useless, 

 that was plain ; so they stood with upraised wings, quivering and moaning, in 

 tenderest supplication. It was too much even for conscious rectitude and we 

 withdrew abashed. 



The flight of the avocet is strong, direct and rather swift, much 

 like that of the greater yellow legs, with neck and legs fully ex- 

 tended, fore and aft. It can alight on or rise from the surface of 

 the water with ease. On alighting its long, black and white wings 

 are raised above its back, and slowly folded, as it settles itself with 

 a nodding motion of the head, stands still and looks about it for a 

 moment or two. No bird is better equipped for the amphibious 

 existence that it leads; its long legs and webbed feet enable it to 

 wade through soft muddy shallows of varying depths; and if it 

 suddenly steps beyond its depth it swims as naturally as a duck 

 until it strikes bottom again; the thick plumage of its under parts 

 protects it and marks it as an habitual swimmer. It often feeds 

 while swimming by tipping up like a surface-feeding duck and 

 reaching down into the water with its long neck and bill. It can 

 even dive when necessary. 



