152 SEA-BIRDS 



it breeds only very doubtfully on Kolguev and Waigatz, though 

 certainly, and in places abundantly, on Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef 

 Land and Spitsbergen. It nests in small numbers, and perhaps not 

 every year, on Bear Island, and has a stable and fairly large breeding 

 population in south Iceland; it occasionally breeds in other parts 

 of Iceland. It has not been proved to nest on Jan Mayen. 



The breeding-range of the red-necked phalarope, Phalaropus 

 lobatus, known in America as the northern phalarope, is actually less 

 northerly than that of the grey phalarope, though it nests in many 

 parts of the High Arctic. Its range stops short of Devon and Ellesmere 

 Islands in the Canadian Arctic, of the northern two-fifths of Greenland, 

 and of most of the islands of the Eurasian half of the Polar Basin, 

 though it breeds in Novaya Zemlya, Kolguev and Waigatz, and has 

 occasionally bred in Spitsbergen. It is not on the breeding-list for 

 Bear Island or Jan Mayen. Iceland is an headquarters of it; thousands 

 nest on the eutrophic oasis-lake of Myvatn in the north, and these 

 tame, pretty birds of Odin nest even on a public lake in the middle of 

 Reykjavik, Iceland's capital. The southern limits of the creature's 

 breeding-range are not easy to define, for the outposts are very 

 scattered; it is clear that there are some in north-west Ireland, in 

 the Hebrides, and in Orkney, Shetland and the Faeroes ; but the situation 

 is obscure in Russia, where elements may reach the Kirghiz Steppes, 

 and do reach northern Sakhalin. In North America the red-necked phal- 

 arope breeds in Newfoundland Labrador, but not in Newfoundland, 

 reaches its farthest south as a nesting species in James Bay, and has 

 scattered outposts in the interior of the North-\Vest, Yukon and Alaska. 

 But the main breeding-grounds are along the coastal tundras of the edge 

 of the Polar Basin, and by the mouths of the great north-flowing rivers. 



The winter-quarters of the two sea-phalaropes have until recently 

 been little known, and they are still somewhat mysterious. The present 

 extent of our knowledge is plotted on Figs 27 and 28 (pp. 154, 155). 

 In the west Pacific we know that the grey phalarope reaches Japan, 

 but whether flocks winter in the South China Sea or other Pacific 

 waters to the south of Japan and east of the Philippines is quite 

 unknown. The red-necked phalarope definitely enters those waters, 

 and flocks have been seen oflf North Borneo, northern New Guinea, 

 and further south among the East Indies in the Banda Sea. Phalarope 

 red-necked is recorded from Malaya,* and two from New Zealand; 



*J. Delacour (1947) says the red-necked phalarope "winters in the seas south of 

 Malaysia" — presumably therefore in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean. 



