OP THE BEITISH ISLANDS. 181 



season, and may possibly, like the Waxwing and Eose-coloured Pastor, change 

 its breeding places periodically. There are certain spots favoured by this species 

 on the islands as well as on the mainland 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, Golcheeka near the mouth of the Yenisei, the 

 Taimur Peninsula, the delta of the Lena, the Tchuski Land north of Kamts- 

 chatka,* Alaska, the Parry Islands, and Grinnell Land. To the mainland of 

 Europe it is an accidental straggler only, and is of still less frequent occurrence 

 in North Africa. Although its normal routes across Asia are yet untraced, it 

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

 Pamir, where Severtzow, the Eussian ornithologist, says it is a rare visitor, and 

 to winter on the Mekran coast and in Scinde. A straggler has been met with 

 even 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. It has been obtained 

 in Japan (Owari Hondu), as recorded by Dr. Stejneger ; 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 World, and it has been met with on both the eastern and 

 western coasts of America 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 more 

 recently the late Mr. Salvin and Dr. Sclater have each recorded it from Chili ! 



Allied forms. — Phalaropus hyperboreus, also a British species, and fully 

 treated of in the following chapter. P. wilsoni, an inhabitant of America : in the 

 Nearctic region, breeding on the shores of the lakes as far north as Winnipeg, and 

 south to Great Salt Lake and Lake Michigan ; in the Neotropical region, ranging 

 from Mexico in the north to Patagonia in the south, although its nesting area is 

 not yet traced. 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 suffi- 

 ciently conclusive to merit its inclusion in the British avifauna. — See Proc. Zool. 

 Soc. 1886, p. 297. 



Habits. ^The migrations of the Grey Phalarope are, as a rule, neither very 

 extended nor very regular. When the birds' northern haunts are disturbed by 

 unusually severe tempests, or long-continued frosts, it draws southwards, often 

 in considerable numbers, but such movements are not made every year, and the 

 Grey Phalarope must be classed as a bird that winters as far north as it possibly 

 can with safety. Except during the breeding season, this bird is not seen 

 much on land, but spends the greater part of its time on the sea, where it is 



* Dr. Stejneger met with a flock of Phalaropes, wkich he identified as the present species, several 

 miles at sea near Behring Island, off the coast of Kamtschatka, on the 2ist of August, 1882. No examples, 

 however, were obtained. 



