THE PHALAROPES 257 



I saw a sailor with an old rusty musket literally filling his pockets 

 with them." Gatcombe's notes on their habits are worth quoting 

 in full : " They are generally considered rare, but a few may be seen 

 every autumn in Plymouth Sound during the equinoctial gales : 

 their habits at such times are very elegant ; they alight just outside 

 the breakers, where the froth and seaweed have accumulated, swim 

 with extraordinary activity and lightness, constantly whisking their 

 bodies round, and incessantly nodding their heads and dipping their 

 bills in the water in search of food. So tame and fearless are they 

 at these times, that I have actually seen them give a little spring and 

 flutter only, when fired at and missed, and immediately go on feeding 

 as if nothing had happened." 1 



What the special conditions are that bring about these visitations 

 it is very difficult to say; 2 in fact, the migration of both species is 

 somewhat mysterious. They very rarely touch our shores on the 

 spring journey, and in autumn only in the spasmodic way above 

 narrated, and then their visits are almost confined to the south-east, 

 south, and south-west. True, the rednecked-phalarope has occurred 

 in many counties of England and Scotland, but very irregularly, 

 and always in small numbers. Although this species nests in the 

 British Isles while the grey-phalarope does not, it has always been 

 regarded, so far as actual numbers are concerned, as the rarer of the 

 two species. This is owing to the large number of the grey-phalarope 

 that have been taken during the occasional great autumn invasions. 

 It is quite probable that they are overlooked on migration, for 

 previous to the discovery about the year 1900 of the existence of 

 a nesting colony of the rednecked-phalarope in Ireland, there had 

 been but a single record of the species for that country. Judging 

 from the number of pairs found nesting there in 1904, 3 the species 



1 Zoologist, 1859, vol. 17, p. 6377. 



2 " The combination necessary . . . would seem to be continuous southerly or south-westerly 

 gales blowing at the time the birds are making their southern passage." Ticehurst, Birds of 

 Kent, p. 442. 



3 British Birds (magazine), vol. i. p. 175. 



