PRELIMINARY CLASSIFIED NOTES 253 



and after them, the southern and south-western counties are those most fre- 

 quently visited. Exceptionally well-marked movements occurred in the autumns 

 of 1866, 1869, 1886, and 1891 (cf. Saunders, Itt. Man. Brit. Birds, 2nd ed., 1899, 

 p. 565). It is rare on the north and west of Great Britain. To Ireland it is an 

 occasional visitor (cf. Patten, Irish Naturalist, vol. x. p. 59). It sometimes occurs 

 in small parties. [A. L. T.] 



4. Nest and Eggs. Does not breed in the British Isles. [F. c. R. J.] 



5. Food. In the nesting season, chiefly aquatic and other insects and 

 their larvae. "Twenty analyses of stomachs proved their chief food to consist 

 of small insects, principally gnats and their larvae. In a few stomachs were fine 

 indeterminable remnants of plants algae ? " (Manniche, Terrestrial Mammals and 

 Birds of N.E. Greenland, p. 157). At other times, the smaller thin-skinned 

 crustaceans and other small marine forms ; and the flies and their larvae that breed 

 in the seaweed and refuse on the shore. They have been seen picking parasites off 

 the backs of whales and other cetaceans (Howard Saunders, Manual of British 

 Birds, p. 566). In stomachs of birds examined by Professor Patten were small 

 crabs and scraps of seaweed. The stomach of one killed in Ireland contained 

 twelve larvae of a fly (sp. ?) and a quantity of a small gasteropod shell, probably 

 Hydrobia ulvce, which is found in brackish water (Aquatic Birds, p. 261). The 

 young are attended by the male only, and assisted by him in their search for 

 food, which consists of small aquatic insects mosquitoes probably to a large 

 extent and their larvae, [w. r.] 



REDNECKED-PHALAROPE [Phalaropus lobdtus (Linnaeus); Phala- 

 ropus hyperboreus (Linnaeus). Half-web (Orkneys). French, phalarope 

 cendre ; German, schmalschndbliger Wassertreter ; Italian, falaropo a becco 

 sottile]. 



i. Description. As in the grey-phalarope the feet are lobed, and the hinder 

 border of the tarsometatarsus is serrated ; but it is to be distinguished from the 

 grey-phalarope by its smaller size and longer and more slender beak. The female 

 is somewhat larger and more brightly coloured than the male, and there is a conspicu- 

 ous seasonal change of coloration. (PL 112.) Length 7'5 in. [179'07 mm.]. In the 

 nuptial, summer dress, the upper part of the head to the level of the lower border 

 of the ear-coverts is of a lead-grey, the rest of the upper parts somewhat darker, 

 enlivened by a line of sandy buff on either side of the interscapulars ; wing-coverts 



