434 BIRDS OF SOMERSETSHIRE. 



generally throughout England, so much so that Mr. 

 Gurney published a short pamphlet on the subject, 

 with a map showing in what parts they had been 

 most numerous : in this county he notices as many 

 as twelve specimens having been taken, one of them 

 as far inland as Ilminster ; the rest in various 

 parts, mostly on the coast. One of those in my 

 own collection was knocked down by a boy with his 

 cap in the village of Halse, which is about fourteen 

 or fifteen miles from the sea, in November, 1861, 

 and on the same day I saw a Grey Phalarope fly by 

 when I was out shooting at Crowcombe : as that 

 place is not above five miles in a straight line from 

 Halse, it may have been the same bird ; the weather 

 was very wild at the time ; wind about west, a heavy 

 gale. 



The Grey Phalarope, as may be at once con- 

 jectured from the formation of its feet, (the toes 

 being lobed much like those of the Bald Coot), is a 

 good swimmer and much more at home in, and 

 therefore fonder of, the water than any other of the 

 Scolopacidse, to which class it seems scarcely to 

 belong, as, however much the shape of the beak 

 resembles the rest of the family, the lobe foot 

 seems to afford a decided distinction. Its food 

 consists mostly of thin-skinned Crustacea and 

 aquatic and marine insects. Mr. Blake-Knox, 

 writing in the 'Zoologist' for 1866, says on this 

 subject, " Its food I found to be a species of sea- 



