PHALAROPODIDJEC — THE PHALAROPES — STEGANOPUS. 
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anxiety for the safety of their eggs, limping or running with extended wings, uttering 
a feeble and melancholy note. The young leave the nest shortly after they are 
hatched, and run after their parents over the moss and along the edges of the small 
ponds. They had all departed by the beginning of August. 
Mr. MacF arlane found this species breeding in great abundance in the Arctic 
regions through which he passed, from the edge of the wooded country to the 
shores of the Arctic Sea. In more than fifty instances in which he made notes of 
its nests and eggs, he found the former to be mere depressions in the ground lined 
with a few dried leaves and grasses, and in almost every instance placed near the edges 
of small ponds ; the number of the eggs was almost invariably four. The nests were 
seen from the 17th of June until into July, and in several instances perfectly fresh 
eggs were found as late as July 5. They were tolerably numerous in the wooded 
country, were also found in the Barrens wherever there were small lakes, and were 
not less frequently seen at the very edge of the Arctic Sea and on the islands off the 
coast. Sometimes the birds permitted the near approach of man without any noise 
or special manifestations of uneasiness ; but at other times both parents would make 
great outcries, and fly from tree to tree in order to draw the intruder away from the 
nest. 
The eggs of this species average 1.10 inches in length by .80 of an inch in breadth. 
Their ground-color is a greenish drab. The spots are much finer and more numerous 
than in the eggs of the fulicarius, and are of a sepia-brown. They are pyriform in 
shape, and much smaller than those of the Bed Phalarope. Their nests were found 
by Mr. Lockhart quite common on the Yukon. These eggs, collected in great num- 
bers at various points on both the Yukon and Anderson rivers, exhibit great variations. 
The ground-color ranges from the darkest olive-green to brownish olive, drab of va- 
rious shades, to buff, and more rarely to a stone-gray. The spots also vary in size and 
in their distribution, but are usually very numerous, and often confluent ; they vary 
in their shades from a bistre so dark as to be almost black, to chocolate-brown, and 
even lighter shades. 
Genus STEGANOPUS, ATeillot. 
Steganopus, Vieill. Enc. Meth. 1823, 1106 (type, Phalaropus lobatus, Wils.,=P. Wilsoni, Sabine). 
Holopodius, Bonap. Synop. 1828, 342. 
Char. Bill slender and subulate, with strictly basal nostrils, as in Lobipes; web between 
outer and middle toes not reaching to second joint, the lateral membrane of all the toes nar- 
row and scarcely scalloped. 
Steganopus Wilsoni. 
WILSON’S PHALAROPE. 
? Tringa glacialis, Gmel. S. N. I. ii. 1788, 675 (based on Plain Phalarope, Penn. Arct. Zool. II. 
1785, 495, no. 415 ; Lath. Synop. V. 173). 
Phalaropus lobatus, “Linn.” Wils. Am. Orn. IX. 1825, 72, pi. 73, fig. 3 (not of Linn.). 
Phalaropus Wilsoni, Sabine, App. Frankl. Journ. 1823, 691. — Sw. & Rich. F. B. A. II. 1831, 405, 
pi. 69. — Nutt. Man. II. 1834, 245. — -Aun. Orn. Biog. III. 1835, 400, pi. 254. — Cass, in Baird’s 
B. N. Am. 1858, 705. — Baird, Cat. N. Am. B. 1859, no. 519. 
Phalaropus ( Holopodius ) Wilsoni, Bonap. Synop. 1828, 342, no. 279 . — Nutt. Man. II. 1834, 245. 
Lobipes Wilsoni, Aud. Synop. 1839, 241 ; B. Am. V. 1S42, 299, pi. 341. 
Steganopus Wilsoni, Coues, Ibis, Apr. 1865, 158 ; Key, 1872, 248 ; Check List, 1873, no. 409 ; 2d 
ed. 1882, no. 602 ; B. N. W. 1874, 467. — Ridgw. Nom. N. Am. B. 1882, no. 565. 
