THE RED-NECKED PlIALAROI'E. 
215 
ago I fell into the serious error of asserting positively that it 
was unknown here ; an error, however, which I was ha])py to 
correct, when, in 1864, a bird of this species was taken in Unst 
and brought to me. Upon making inquiries among the people 
of the neighbourhood where the bird was shot, I became 
aware, to my surprise, that it was seen in considerable numbers 
every summer in the marshes ; and not only there, but at one 
particular spot near the Loch of Cliff, neither of which localities 
it so happened I had ever chanced to visit in the summer time. 
I have since had many opportunities of visiting the breeding 
haunts, and finding the nests. A few extracts from some notes 
jotted down nearly upon the spot, while the subject was new 
to me, will perhaps convey a better idea than a formal descrip- 
tion : — 
June 2^th 1867. — About eleven o’clock this morning I 
started for determined to make a thorough search for 
Phalaropes’ eggs. The marshes lie close to , among some 
low meadows about a quarter of a mile from the sea ; 
and on arriving at a rushy swamp about a hundred yards in 
length, which is the only place where the birds are seen, 
except in the deep burn which runs from it, I at once began 
wading. Soon I discovered several pairs of Phalaropes 
scattered among the rushes at one end of the swamp ; and as 
they kept very close to the little squashy islands which rose 
up here and there, I examined those spots very carefully, but 
nothing in the shape of a nest was to be found, either there or 
at the edge of the water, where the grass was long and of 
tempting appearance. Having spent about two hours in this 
way without the smallest success, I very reluctantly turned my 
steps homeward, and, after proceeding about a mile, sat down 
* The suppression of the local names in this especial extract may perhaps he 
unwelcome to the skin-and-egg-shell fancier, hut the good ornithologist will 
scarcely find much fault with it. Some of the choicer birds of Shetland have 
already had only too good cause to lament the change which has come over 
their relations with the south, since, for example, the days when the unlucky 
fellow who brought the news of William’s landing in Torbay in November 
1688, had to spend his winter in the prison of Lerwick, in the absence of any 
confirmatory tidings. — E d. 
