NORTHERN PHALAROFE. 
209 
are seen perpetually dipping their bills into the water, or with 
a reclined neck swimming and turning about in their favorite 
element, with all the ease and grace of a diminutive swan. In 
Iceland Hyperborean Phalaropes arrive about the middle of 
May ; and waiting the complete thawing of the ice, they are 
seen, for a time, assembled in flocks out at sea several miles 
from the shore. This gregarious association breaks up early in 
June, when seceding pairs retire to breed by the mountain 
ponds. They are very faithful to their mates and jealous of 
intrusion from strangers of the same species, on which occa- 
sions the males fight with obstinacy, running to and fro upon 
the water at the time even when the females are engaged in 
incubation. When the young are exposed to any danger, the 
parents are heard to express their alarm by a repeated 'prip, 
'prip. At the commencement of August, as in the glacial 
regions of America, the whole retire to the open sea previous 
to their migration to the South, and by the end of that month 
they are no longer to be found in that island. 
The food of this species is said to be chiefly worms, winged 
insects, particularly diptera, and such other kinds as frequent 
the surface of the water. In specimens which I have exam- 
ined, the stomachs contained some small gravel and the 
remains of aquatic coleopterous insects, as the different kinds 
of small water-beetles. These individuals, which were young 
birds beginning to moult, had therefore varied their litre by a 
visit to some fresh-water pool or lake, and like their kindred 
Sandpipers, had landed on the shore in quest of gravel. They 
were likewise fat and very finely flavored. The old birds, 
hunted as food by the Greenlanders, are said, however, to be 
oily and unpalatable, which may arise probably from the 
nature of the fare on which they subsist in high latitudes, — if 
the birds alluded to are not, in fact, the small Petrels instead 
of Phalaropes ; though the inhabitants using the skins medici- 
nally, to wipe their rheumy and diseased eyes, seems to decide 
pretty nearly in favor of the present bird. 
In the spring of 1832, about the beginning of May, so dense 
a flock was seen on the margin of Chelsea Beach, in this 
VOL. II. — 14 
