170 SCOLOPACIDJE. 



at once serves to distinguish it from the great number of the 

 smaller sandpipers a distinction indicating an analogy to 

 the grebes amongst the Water-birds, and the coot and water- 

 hen amongst the Waders ; thus forming a connecting link be- 

 tween those two families, as the butcher birds between the 

 Raptores and the Perchers. 



The food of the phalarope consists of insects, molluscse, 

 worms, and small testaceous animals ; for which, with the 

 sandpipers, it probes the mud and ooze. 



On account of the rarity of this handsome species, natu- 

 ralists have had but limited opportunities for observing its 

 habits ; for which reason we must travel in fancy to the far 

 west, where the celebrated ornithologist of America, Audo- 

 bon, observes in his Ornithological Notes, that the phalarope 

 is gregarious, forming in large flocks on the approach of winter, 

 and frequenting the neighbourhood of the Ohio and Arkansas 

 rivers, where he saw them swimming along the margin, and 

 picking up the seeds of grasses ; also it has been observed far 

 out at sea, at a considerable distance from any land, assem- 

 bling in hundreds on the banks of sea-weed. 



Yet, even where they abound in such numbers, the phala- 

 rope is difficult to be obtained, as it swims with great speed, 

 runs along the sand or shingle with ease and rapidity, and flies 

 with considerable swiftness. The flesh of the phalarope, ac- 

 cording to the same authority, is excellent. 



A closely allied species, the red phalarope (Phalaropus 

 hyperboreus) , has not as yet been obtained on our coasts, 

 although described by Bullock as breeding on the Orkney 

 Islands, where they displayed the greatest tameness, appear- 

 ing like a duck in miniature from their ease in swimming. 



The phalarope in spring retires to the Arctic regions of 

 both continents to breed. Like the godwits, and other birds 

 of the Scolopacidse, the phalarope assumes during summer 

 the peculiar rich livery of the breeding season ; and in that 

 plumage is of excessive rarity in its occurrence. One speci- 

 men, of six obtained on the eastern coasts of Ireland, in our 

 own collection, was shot on the 20th of June, 1849, and very 

 strangely exhibits the same gray stage of plumage as the 

 others, obtained in the autumn and winter of different years. 



Habitat Northern Europe. 



