BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 115 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Larger than either of the other Phalaropes; bill, slender, 

 flattened; wings, long; tail, short; legs, moderate; tarsus, com- 

 pressed; plumage very compact; head above and neck behind, 

 light ashy; wide stripe behind the eye, reddish-black; neck be- 

 fore, and wide stripe running upwards onto the back, bright red- 

 dish brown, darker on the sides of the neck; back, wings, and 

 tail, cinereous; darkest on the wings, and mixed with reddish 

 on the back; rump, and upper tail coverts, white; entire under 

 parts white, except the neck before, which is pale reddish; bill 

 and legs, black. 



Length, 9.50; wing, 5.50; tail, 2.25; tarsus, 1.25. 



Habitat, temperate North America. 



Family RECURVrHO STRIDE. 



RECURTIROSTRA AMERICANA Gmelin. (225.) 



AMERICAN AVOCET. 



These waders are less abundant in Minnesota than in either 

 of the Dakotas, but I have met them in their spring migrations 

 almost uniformly, and in small flocks occasionally in the autumn. 

 They arrive about the first week in May. sometimes a little 

 earlier, and mostly disappear in a few days, the majority 

 going either farther north, or west into the states mentioned, 

 where the general conditions are more favorable for their food. 

 Except in San Diego, California, I have found them mostly 

 about the shores of small lakes in dry sections, many of them 

 sandy, and without much if any timber. Nearly every dryland 

 lake has somewhere along its outline a marshy, muddy border 

 that affords just the kind of condition most likely to be charged 

 with an abundance of larvae and worms which constitute their 

 chief diet. However, during migration and the interval be- 

 tween their arrival and the nesting, I have found them along 

 the borders of running water, and the sandy, stony shores of 

 large lakes like Minnetonka, but only in pairs. At these times 

 they are not infrequently associated with the Stilts. The only 

 nest that I ever saw was on the shore, perhaps not more 

 than a yard from the water, and consisted of little more than a 

 moderate depression in the dry earth between tussocks of 

 coarse grass, with some fragments of grass and weeds laid 

 loosely around it. It contained four eggs the ground color of 

 which was an olivaceous-drab, but varying in intensity in the 



