44 LOBIPEDID.E. 



This pretty species, remarkable for the great clifFerencc of 

 its red appearance when in tlie plumage of summer, compared 

 to its delicate grey colour in winter, and from wliich latter 

 prevailing tint it derives its name, received an early notice 

 from our countryman and naturalist George Edwards, who 

 figured this bird in its winter plumage in his plate, No. 308, 

 from a specimen killed in Yorkshire, in January 1757, and 

 another in its summer plumage, plate 142, from a specimen 

 received from Hudson's Bay. Edwards, in his Gleanings in 

 Natural History, called them Coot-footed, from the dilated 

 and lobed membranes of the toes, resembling in structure the 

 same part in the Coot ; and in Papa Westra, according to 

 Dr. Neill, in his Tour through Orkney, the Phalaropes are 

 called Half-webs. 



Such decided swimmers are these Phalaropes, that Major 

 Sabine, in his Memoir on the Birds of Greenland, mentions 

 having shot one out of a flock of four, on the Avest coast of 

 Greenland in latitude 68°, while they were swimming in the 

 sea amongst icebergs, three or four miles from the shore ; 

 and Dr. Richardson, in his Natural History, Appendix to Sir 

 Edward Parry ""s Second Arctic Voyage, says, they were ob- 

 served upon the sea, out of sight of land, preferring to swim 

 out of danger rather than take wing. Their under plumage 

 is also thick and compact, and the bones of the legs flattened 

 like those of the true swimming birds. 



Though formerly a rare bird in this country, since Pennant 

 says that he only knew of two instances in which it had oc- 

 curred in his time, they are now more common, and generally 

 appear in the autumn, when on their way to their southern 

 winter quarters. They are also, for the most part, young 

 birds of the year, in various stages of change towards the pure 

 and delicate grey colour of the plumage of winter. Some 

 years since, A. B. Lambert, Esq. presented to the Zoological 

 Society a beautifully marked adult bird ; this was killed in 



