"""""■ HYPERBOREAN PHALAROPE. 119 



a hollow scooped out among the herbage, and covered with a few bits 

 of dried grass and moss. The eggs are always four ; they measure at an 

 average an inch and three-sixteenths in length, seven-eighths in their great- 

 est diameter, are rather pointed at the smaller end, and are more uni- 

 form in their size and markings than those of most water-birds. The 

 ground colour is a deep dull buff, and is irregularly marked with large 

 and small blotches of dark reddish-brown, which are larger and more 

 abundant on the crown. The birds shewed great anxiety for the safety 

 of their eggs, limping before us, or running with extended wings, and 

 emitting a feeble melancholy note as if about to expire. When we ap- 

 proached them, they resumed aU their natural alacrity, piped in their 

 usual manner, flew off and alighted on the water. Captain Emery and 

 myself followed some nearly an hour, assisted by a pointer dog, in the hope 

 of tiring them out ; but they seemed to laugh at our efforts, and when Dash 

 was quite close to them, they would suddenly fly off* in another direction, 

 and with great swiftness, always leading us farther from their nests. The 

 young leave the nest shortly after they are hatched, and run after their 

 parents over the moss, and along the edges of the small ponds ; but I 

 saw none on the water that were not fully fledged. Both young and old 

 had departed by the beginning of August. 



The Hyperborean Phalarope seems to undei-go an almost continual 

 moult, and is in full plumage only about six weeks each year. The 

 young when fledged are nearly grey above, and all white beneath. Some of 

 them breed before they have acquired what may be considered the perfect 

 plumage ; and the very old birds become greyish also at the approach 

 of winter, the red of the throat and other parts becoming bright again 

 in the beginning of May, or sometimes in April. The scapulars of the 

 young are conspicuously shorter than the longest primaries, but after the 

 first moult are equal in length. The upper wing-coverts are then also 

 short. 



I have never met with this species in any part of the interior, although 

 I have procured the Red Phalarope and Wilson's Phalarope in many 

 parts to the west of the Alleghany Mountains, at a distance of more than 

 a thousand miles from the sea coast. 



