BIRDS OF MINNESOTA. 115 
SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 
Larger than either of the other Phalaropes; bill, slender, 
flattened; wings, long; tail, short; legs, moderate; tarsus, com- 
pressed; plumage very compact; head above and neck behind, 
lightashy; wide stripe behind the eye, reddish-black; neck be- 
fore,and wide stripe running upwards onto the back, bright red- 
dish- brown, darker on the sides of the neck; back, wings, and 
tail, cinereous; darkest on the wings, and mixed with reddish 
on the back; rump, and upper tail coverts, white; entire under 
parts white, except the neck before, which is pale reddish; bill 
and legs, black. 
Length, 9.50; wing, 5.50; tail, 2.25; tarsus, 1.25. 
Habitat, temperate North America. 
Family RECURVIROSTRID_. 
RECURVIROSTRA AMERICANA GMELIN. (225. ) 
AMERICAN AVOCET. 
These waders are less abundant in Minnesota than in either 
of the Dakotas, but I have met them in their spring migrations 
almost uniformly, and in small flocks occasionally in the autumn. 
They arrive about the first week in May, sometimes a little 
earlier, and mostly disappear in a few days, the majority 
going either farther north, or west into the states mentioned, 
where the general conditions are more favorable for their food. 
Except in San Diego, California, I have found them mostly 
about the shores of small lakes in dry sections, many of them 
sandy, and without much if any timber. Nearly every dryland 
lake has somewhere along its outline a marshy, muddy border 
that affords just the kind of condition most likely to be charged 
with an abundance of larve and worms which constitute their 
chief diet. However, during migration and the interval be- 
tween their arrival and the nesting, I have found them along 
the borders of running water, and the sandy, stony shores of 
large lakes like Minnetonka, but only in pairs. At these times 
they are not infrequently associated with the Stilts. The only 
nest that I ever saw was on the shore, perhaps not more 
than a yard from the water, and consisted of little more than a 
moderate depression in the dry earth between tussocks of 
coarse grass, with some fragments of grass and weeds laid 
loosely around it. It contained four eggs the ground color of 
which was an olivaceous-drab, but varying in intensity in the 
