Wilson's Phalarope 



361 



no means the only interesting points connected with these little birds, for, con- 

 trary to the conditions prevailing among most birds, the females are not only 

 larger and brighter colored than the males, but they appear to do most of the 

 love making and to permit the duty of nest building and incubation, as well as 

 the care of the young, to fall upon their consorts, being, as Chapman says, "male 

 in all but the prime essentials of sex." 



Phalaropes are preeminently birds of the Northern Hemisphere, the three 

 known species being usually placed in separate genera; all are found in, though 

 only one is characteristic of, North America. This is Wilson's Phalarope (Ste- 

 ganopus tricolor], the largest species, which may be known by the membrane of 

 the toes being even and unscalloped. In the adult female in summer the top 

 of the head and neck are 

 white, becoming pearl-gray on 

 the back, a black stripe passes 

 through the eye, continuing 

 broadly down each side of the 

 neck and changing gradually 

 on the lower portion to a dark, 

 rich chestnut, which continues 

 backward along each side of 

 the back, while the fore neck 

 and chest are soft, buffy cin- 

 namon, and a stripe above 

 the eyes, chin, cheeks, throat, 

 and lower parts is pure white. 

 In the male at this season 

 the colors are much duller, 

 and in winter both are plain 

 ashy gray above and white below, with the chest and sides of the breast 

 shaded with pale gray. This species is confined in summer to temperate 

 North America, chiefly in the interior, breeding from northern Illinois and 

 Utah northward to the Saskatchewan region, and migrating south in winter 

 to Brazil and Patagonia. Mr. E. W. Nelson has given a very entertaining ac- 

 count of the summer life of this bird as observed in northern Illinois. They 

 arrive from the south the first part of May and by the middle of the month 

 the love making commences. He says: "The only demonstrations I have ob- 

 served during the pairing time consist of a kind of solemn bowing of the head 

 and body; but sometimes, with the head lowered and thrust forward, they will 

 run back and forth in front of the object of their regard. A male is often accom- 

 panied by two females at first, but as soon as his choice is made the rejected bird 

 joins her fortunes with some more impressionable swain. The nesting site is 

 usually in some thin tuft of grass on some level spot, but often in an open place 

 concealed by only a few straggling blades of small sedges. The male scratches 

 a shallow depression in the soft earth, which is usually lined with a thin layer 

 of fragments of old grass blades, upon which the eggs, numbering three or four, 



FlG. iai. Red Phalarope, Crymophilus fulicarius. 



