The Wilson Phalarope 
longer militant. They do not have 
to be. They have arrived. It is 
sober truth to say that these sturdy 
pioneers of feminism have assumed 
all the functions of leadership, in¬ 
cluding that of courting, and that 
they have delegated to the males all 
domestic cares and responsibilities, 
save that of laying eggs. 
These birds before me were evi¬ 
dently paired and, as manifestly, had 
local attachments for that particular 
stretch of grass and weeds and ooze. 
One pair lit near me as I was photo¬ 
graphing a Black Tern’s nest, and the 
male began to poke about in the 
reeds, like a hen that has forgotten, 
or pretends to have forgotten, the pre¬ 
cise location of her nest. The female 
dogged his steps and he occasionally 
wilson phalarope, male and female, chased her off in a petulant way, pre- 
AAVING cisely as a female of any more rational 
species would have done under like 
circumstances. Finally, the male housewife disappeared in a certain 
clump toward which he had already twice feinted. The female came to 
a standstill and mounted guard for as much as ten minutes. The situa¬ 
tion was perfectly clear from an oological standpoint. The eggs were 
being covered until it suited my pleasure to claim them. Imagine my 
surprise, therefore, when the female suddenly flitted over the weeds to a 
more distant clump, to which her dutiful spouse had sneaked, routed him 
out and made off with him to parts unknown. 
On succeeding days I raked that neck of the swamp with a fine¬ 
toothed comb, but all to no avail. The birds came and went without 
rhyme or reason, now one, now two, and now all four at once, from I knew 
not where, and disappeared again as mysteriously. If they lighted, the 
reeds swallowed them up; if they flew, they did it in a demure way which 
was a rebuke to curiosity. In flying, a bird would sometimes give voice 
to its disquiet in a sort of hoarse, barking note, a rough monosyllable, 
wib, which was also occasionally subdued to a mellow croak, oont. This 
was often a summons, and if uttered by a single bird aloft, would serve to 
rouse its mate from some recess of the grass; whereupon both would flit 
away, as though renouncing all claim to that locality. 
1186 
