202 Tue Brrps Asour Us. 
attend to the monotonous matter of hatching them. 
It is significant that the female is somewhat larger 
and a finer-feathered fowl. In other words, the sexes 
are badly mixed, the female laying the eggs, but the 
male being the real mother. Such things have been 
known in unfeathered bipeds. 
Wilson’s Phalarope is not a northern bird in the 
sense that the others are, as it breeds in the United 
States. It is not uncommon westward from the Mis- 
sissippi Valley, but rare in the Atlantic seaboard States. 
Warren reports it, however, in Pennsylvania, saying 
that “at Erie Bay small flocks of these phalaropes 
are sometimes to be seen in the fall swimming in the 
water like ducks.” 
The Lobe-foot, as this bird is known to many, is 
stated by Dr. Cooper, in his work on the ornithology 
of the Pacific seaboard, to pass “in spring and fall 
through Washington Territory [now State] in small 
flocks, which associate sometimes with the sand- 
pipers, but appear to prefer wetter feeding-grounds, 
wading in the shallow creeks at low tide, and even 
swimming on the ocean several miles off shore.” This 
is equally applicable to our Eastern phalaropes as seen 
in March off shore and on the beaches of New Jersey. 
In the United States there are two beautiful wading 
birds that have considerable in common and yet are 
not even generically related. These birds are the 
Avocets and the Stilts. The Avocet is one of our 
largest wading birds, and is beautifully marked, being 
largely black and white. The upward curve of the 
bill at once distinguishes it from other waders. They 
were formerly very abundant on the New Jersey 
