372 HYPERBOREAN PHALAROPE. 



shafts ; tlie secondaries are white at their base, and on the margin o*^ 

 their blackish tips, some of them being also white on their inner web, so 

 that the white much predominates : the tertials are very long and wholly 

 blackish. The tail is little more than two inches long ; the feathers are 

 blackish gray, edged with pale ferruginous at tip. The feet are of a 

 greenish lead ; the naked space on the tibia nearly half an inch ; the 

 tarsus little more than three-quarters of an inch, and precisely of the 

 same length with the middle toe ; the hind toe no more than three- 

 sixteenths of an inch. 



In old and perfect specimens, especially old females, this sex being 

 larger and much handsomer, the back, scapulars, and wing-coverts are 

 of a very intense shining black, the anterior part of the back and sca- 

 pulars being skirted with fulvous, and the wing-coverts edged near the 

 tip with pure white ; the sides and also the inferior portion of the neck 

 are of a bright rufous : the two middle tail-feathers are of the same 

 deep black as the back, and the lateral ashy ones are edged with white. 

 It will be remarked that the chief difference between the specimen 

 figured and the quite perfect state resides in the ferruginous coloring 

 of the sides of the neck, which does not meet on the breast, as it does 

 quite broadly in adult birds : considerable variation takes place in this 

 respect, which is entirely owing to the more or less advanced maturity 

 of the bird. 



The young before the summer moult are well distmguished by having 

 the forehead, cheeks, throat, sides of the neck and neck beneath pure 

 white, as well as all the under parts, the neck and flanks being the 

 only parts tinged with cinereous : a slight yellowish tinge appears on 

 the sides of the neck : the top of the head only, a band along the nucha, 

 a.nd a patch around the eyes are blackish gray slightly skirted with 

 rufous : the back and scapulars blackish, each feather broadly skirted 

 with bright ferruginous: the wing-coverts blackish, lesser margined 

 with white ; greater white at the tip : the inner part of the tarsus is 

 yellow ; the exterior and the toes of a yellowish green. 



During summer this bird resorts to lakes and fresh waters, though 

 preferring at all times brackish water: in winter they betake them- 

 selves to the sea, and are even met with at great distances from landj 

 floating among icebergs in the desolate seas of the north : they swim 

 still better than the other Phalaropes, and are met with farther at sea. 

 This species is mostly seen in pairs, though sometimes in small flocks, 

 and busily engaged in dipping their bill into the water after the minute 

 and almost invisible animals of the ocean. They are also much on the 

 wing, somewhat like the Gulls and Terns, and their cry resembles that 

 of the Greater Tern. 



Although the Hyperborean Phalarope is a very rare visitant in the 

 United States, there being a few instances only of its being shot in 



