GAME BIRDS AND WILD FOWL. 195 



piper, and some few other Arctic birds, it appears to be very local 

 during the breeding season, and may possibly, like the Waxwing and 

 the Rose-coloured Pastor, change its breeding places periodically. 

 Tnere are certain spots favoured by this species on the islands as 

 well as on the piainland of the coasts of Arctic Asia and America, 

 extending to at least as far north as lat. 82)^°, and probably to 

 all existing land suited to its requirements in the Polar Basin. 

 Among these may be instanced Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen, 

 the Taimyr peninsula, the delta of the Lena, the Tchuski Land 

 north of Kamtschatka, Alaska, the Parry Islands, and Grinnell 

 Land. To the mainland of Europe it is only an accidental 

 straggler, and is of still less frequent occurrence in North Africa. 

 Although its " fly-lines " across Asia are yet untraced, it appears 

 to cross that continent on migration, many, perhaps, by way of 

 the Pamir, where Severtzow, the Russian ornithologist, says it is 

 a rare visitor, and to winter on the Mekran coast, and Scinde. 

 A straggler has even been met with as far to the south-east as 

 Calcutta. In the far east, Kamtschatka and the Kurile Islands 

 appear to be winter resorts of this species; whilst it has been 

 known to wander as far as New Zealand. In the New World its 

 wanderings are much the same as in the Old, and it has been 

 met with on both the eastern and western coasts as far south as 

 lat. 40° ; and inland, Audubon speaks of a flock of about a 

 hundred birds on the banks of the Ohio, in lat. 38° ; whilst in 

 later years Mr. Salvin records it from Chili ! 



Allied Forms. — Phalaropus hyJ>erboreus,3Xso a British species, 

 and fully treated of in the following chapter. F. wilsoni, an 

 inhabitant of America, breeding on the shores of the lakes as far 

 north as Winnipeg, and south to Great Salt Lake, and Lake 

 Michigan ; wintering in the Neotropical region, from Mexico in 

 the north to Patagonia in the south. Readily identified from 

 the only two other Phalaropes known by the long, slender bill, 

 which is more than an inch in length. This latter species has 

 been recorded as British from Leicestershire, but the evidence is 

 not sufficiently conclusive to merit its inclusion in the British 

 avifauna. See Proc. Zool. Soc. i886, p. 297. 



Time during which the Gray Phalarope may be 

 taken. — August ist to March ist. 



o 2 



