434 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 
generally throughout England, so much so that Mr. 
Gurney published a short pamphlet on the subject, 
with a map showing in what parts they had been 
most numerous: in this county he notices as many 
as twelve specimens having been taken, one of them 
as far inland as Ilminster; the rest in various 
parts, mostly on the coast. One of those in my 
own collection was knocked down by a boy with his 
cap in the village of Halse, which is about fourteen 
or fifteen miles from the sea, in November, 1861, 
and on the same day I saw a Grey Phalarope fly by 
when I was out shooting at Crowcombe: as that 
place is not above five miles in a straight line from 
Halse, it may have been the same bird; the weather 
was very wild at the time; wind about west, a heavy 
gale. 
The Grey Phalarope, as may be at once con- 
jectured from the formation of its feet, (the toes 
being lobed much like those of the Bald Coot), is a 
good swimmer and much more at home in, and 
therefore fonder of, the water than any other of the 
Scolopacidee, to which class it seems scarcely to 
belong, as, however much the shape of the beak 
resembles the rest of the family, the lobe foot 
seems to afford a decided distinction. Its food 
consists mostly of thin-skinned Crustacee and 
aquatic and marine insects. Mr. Blake-Knox, 
writing in the ‘ Zoologist’ for 1866, says on this 
subject, “Its food I found to be a species of sea- 
