PLOVERS AND SANDPIPERS. 89 
or pale buff in ground colour, blotched, spotted, and 
clouded with olive-brown, dark reddish-brown, and 
violet-gray. But one brood is reared in the year, 
and the eggs are laid in June. As soon as the 
young are able to fly the movement south begins. 
The Turnstone breeds throughout the northern 
parts of the Nearctic and Palzarctic regions, as 
far as land is known to extend. Its nearest 
breeding stations to the British Islands are in 
Denmark, on some of the Baltic Islands, and in 
Iceland. During winter it visits the coasts of 
almost every part of the world, south of the Arctic 
circle. 
PHALAROPES. 
But three species of the genus Phalaropus are 
known, and two of these are British birds, one of 
them the Red-necked Phalarope, P. hyperboreus, 
breeding very sparingly and locally within our 
limits, the other the Gray Phalarope, P. fulicarcus, 
a more or less regular visitor to our coasts in 
autumn and winter. From many points of view 
the Phalaropes are very interesting birds. They 
_are distinguished from all other Limicoline forms 
by the structure of the feet, which are lobed like 
those of the Coot—a peculiarity which induced 
Edwards, in 1741, to describe a Phalarope as the 
“Coot-footed Tringa.” They are by far the most 
aquatic of the Charadriide, swimming as readily 
as Gulls or Ducks, and often going for hundreds of 
miles out on to the open sea; indeed they spend 
