Do2i Nichols, Limicoline Voices. [oct. 



birds alighted, more particularly when their companions, alarmed 

 or for some other reason, move on, and is thought of as the tarry- 

 ing individual's note. On August 17, 1919, I had picked up decoys 

 preparatory to leaving a pool in the meadows when a single Lesser 

 Yellow-legs came down to the pool calling a similar "kee-a" on 

 the wing, though I was in full view. It went on without alighting 

 with "whew" notes characteristic of the species. Probably this 

 was an individual which wanted to stay, from a small company 

 which had left the meadow. 



(13) Wounded birds, on being pursued and captured, have a 

 harsh scream of fear, "cheerp." I have noticed this from birds 

 of the year in southward migration only, not from adults under 

 the same circumstances. 



Thus six of the ten notes assigned to the Lesser Yellow-leg are 

 interpreted as analogous with six of the nine of the Greater, 

 namely, location, flight, protest, companionship, alighting and flush- 

 ing notes. With the exception of the flight-note these seem also 

 strictly homologous, and little differentiated intraspecifically. 

 The flight or identification note if homologous is divergent, as 

 utility requires that it should be. It is homologous with the 

 Greater's flight-note series — Nos. (2), (3), (4), and (5). Setting 

 aside note No (9) of the Greater, likely associated with the breed- 

 ing season, the two for which nothing to correspond has been found 

 in the Lesser are recruiting and recruit calls, Nos. (3) and (4), 

 differentiations of the flight-note. As a matter of fact a variation 

 of the Lesser's flight-note is very close to the recruit note, and the 

 condition may be summed up by saying that the flight-note of the 

 Greater has to a greater extent than that of the Lesser been 

 broken up into different notes of specialized application. 



Setting aside No. (13), which the Greater probably also possesses, 

 though I have not heard it, there are three notes of the Lesser for 

 which nothing to correspond has been found in the Greater. Of 

 these the flocking note, No. (11), correlates with its more gregar- 

 ious habits. From knowledge of the voices of the two to date 

 it seems that the more individualistic, intelligent and wary Greater 

 has calls with more precise significance than the more social 

 Lesser, something more closely approaching a true language, 

 whereas the voice of the Lesser has undergone a longer evolution, 



