458 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



which I took to be the females). This play consisted in the 

 female spinning round rather rapidly on her own axis on the 

 water, the wish to display and show off before her duller mate 

 being very evident. Prof. Collett has told us that in this species 

 it is the plainly-coloured male which is the weaker sex, and must 

 wholly and entirely undertake the hatching of the eggs and the 

 bringing up of the young. But that the female should go in for 

 the play so remarkable in the males of some species at the begin- 

 ning of the breeding season, was an exercise of rights for which I 

 was hardly prepared. Although Prof. Collett writes that the 

 trait of the male bringing up the young is more or less con- 

 spicuous with most of the arctic waders of the Stint and Sand- 

 piper families, the female Red-necked Phalarope must surely be the 

 typical "new woman " among them all. The Red-necked Phala- 

 rope swims fast. The ordinary notes uttered by the birds when 

 on the water were a short "quut" or "quit," and a "chirra 

 chirra chirra." On the pair rising and flying one after the other, 

 we heard a rapid " ket-ket-ket-ket," and then, when they had 

 settled again, a short " kyow " or two ; perhaps this is the spring 

 pairing note. 



Gallinago major. — On the 16th I heard a bird in a bog, 

 surrounded and partly overgrown by low willow- scrub two or 

 three feet high, calling "ik-kak" (emphasis on first syllable), and, 

 following up the sound, flushed a Great Snipe, which rose silently, 

 flew a short distance with Owl-like flappings, and pitched again, 

 when I flushed it a second time. Meanwhile a Snipe was wheeling 

 round high up in the sky and drumming. The sound seemed 

 deeper in tone than that made by the Common Snipe, but the bird 

 was at a great height, and it was quite wonderful that the sound 

 reached me at all. I do not know if this was the male. 



G. ccelestis. — Occasionally seen in the bogs and by the lake, 

 and heard drumming and calling " whit-tuk." 



Tringa temmincki. — On a bluff overgrown with crowberry, 

 close to the shore, I came suddenly right on to a pair of these 

 dusky grey birds ; one rising just under my feet, uttered a sharp, 

 quick note. Four days later I watched one feeding on some 

 mud uncovered by the tide below a high bank ; while I was 

 sheltered by a bush, it fed up to within a few yards of me. It 

 finally flew off in the direction of some bogs close at hand. I saw 

 one other. 



