114 BIRDS OF THE WEST 



ing the very aristocratic tendency of getting pretty giddy at 

 times. Along about pairing off time they have unusual demonstra- 

 tions. Very likely the Sioux Indians learned their ghost dances 

 from them for one is a repetition of the other. They will dance 

 in circles and scream and whirl about until they fall to earth 

 exhausted. Even the ladies indulge in these dances and are rather 

 forward with their courting. Oh, in birdland they say that the 

 lady phalarope does all the courting. She is the real new woman. 

 Two large soiled white eggs laid upon a floating nest of dead 

 rushes was what I once found on the edge ol a lake in Nebraska 

 and I have often wondered what the mother crane did with her 

 legs when she sat upon her eggs. 



