NORTHERN PHALAROPE. 209 



are seen perpetually dipping their bills into the water, or with 

 a reclined neck , swimming and turning about in their favorite 

 element, with all the ease and grace of a diminutive swan. In 

 Iceland Hyperborean Phalaropes arrive about the middle of 

 May ; and waiting the complete thawing of the ice, they are 

 seen, for a time, assembled in flocks out at sea several miles 

 from the shore. This gregarious association breaks up early in 

 June, when seceding pairs retire to breed by the mountain 

 ponds. They are very faithful to their mates and jealous of 

 intrusion from strangers of the same species, on which occa- 

 sions the males fight with obstinacy, running to and fro upon 

 the water at the time even when the females are engaged in 

 incubation. When the young are exposed to any danger, the 

 parents are heard to express their alarm by a repeated 'prip, 

 'prip. At the commencement of August, as in the glacial 

 regions of America, the whole retire to the open sea previous 

 to their migration to the South, and by the end of that month 

 they are no longer to be found in that island. 



The food of this species is said to be chiefly worms, winged 

 insects, particularly diptera, and such other kinds as frequent 

 the surface of the water. In specimens which I have exam- 

 ined,; the stomachs contained somp small gravel and the 

 remains of aquatic coleopterous insects, as the different kinds 

 of small water-beetles. . These individuals, which were young 

 birds beginning to moult, had therefore varied their fare by a 

 visit to some fresh-water pool or lake, and like their kindred 

 Sandpipers, had landed on the shore in quest of gravel. They 

 were likewise fat and very finely flavored. The old birds, 

 hunted as food by the Greenlanders, are said, however, to be 

 oily and unpalatable, which may arise probably from the 

 nature of the fare on which they subsist in high latitudes, — if 

 the birds alluded to are not, in fact, the small Petrels instead 

 of Phalaropes ; though the inhabitants using the skins medici- 

 nally, to wipe their rheumy and diseased eyes, seems to decide 

 pretty nearly in favor of the present bird. 



In the spring of 1832, about the beginning of May, so dense 

 a flock was seen on the margin of Chelsea Beach, in this 



VOL. n. — 14 



