THE KED-NECKED PlIALAKOPE. 
219 
June, following up the winding course of the broad quiet burn 
which hows through the marshes, I suddenly observed a pair 
of Phalaropes close together near the bank, partly concealed 
by the marsh marigolds, and never for a moment at rest, now 
swimming rapidly out with a pretty nodding motion of the 
head, and next moment threading their way among the tall 
stems of equisetum, occasionally darting forward to pick 
some boating particle of food from the surface. Thinking to 
obtain them both, I fired. One, the female, fell over, dead ; 
the other buttered to the land, as I thought mortally wounded. 
So heavy was its bight that my companion immediately gave 
chase, making sure that he should catch it with ease. He 
pursued it for a considerable distance over the grass, more 
than once nearly getting his hands upon it, when suddenly, to 
his dismay as well as to my own, it rose and bew vigorously 
towards the loch, where it went quietly down among the 
thick herbage, and was lost to us. 
One day in July 1867, as I was sitting by the shore of the 
large loch at Belmont, partially concealed by the tall rank 
herbage, watching a Eed-breasted Merganser with her young 
brood, and wondering at the speed with which the little downy 
creatures could swim, I heard the well-known cry of Phalaropes, 
and looking up I saw two of them coming towards me, rather 
high in the air. Suddenly they dropped toward the deep part 
of the loch — this sudden dropping from a height being a well- 
marked habit of the species — and then they swept inshore, and 
alighted in the water about bve yards from the brink, and so 
close to me as to give the best possible opportunity for watch- 
ing them. When quiet and undisturbed, they sat with the 
neck drawn in and the head low between the shoulders, 
occasionally dipping the bill into the water. Both were brst 
year’s birds, as I could see by the paleness of the red upon the 
neck. A Phalarope may be said to almost never rise silently. 
On taking wing, it will generally by straight for a short 
distance, and then wheel off abruptly. 
My observations fully bear out Mr Dunn’s statements, that 
