The Wi Iso n Pha la rope 
family affairs. The sug¬ 
gestion is worthy of con¬ 
sideration, for it may 
well be that a society 
which has evolved fe¬ 
males in pants has also 
produced a goodly num¬ 
ber of bachelor-maids 
and complacent aunties, 
not to mention fortunate 
males who have man¬ 
aged to escape the wiles 
and blandishments of 
the ardent sex. 
That the male who 
has once taken the veil 
does not shirk thence¬ 
forth the arduous duties 
of paternity, we have most emphatic proof. The male bird not only incu¬ 
bates the eggs, but has sole care of the chicks when hatched. While in 
camp at Goose Lake, in 1912, I found that young Phalaropes were moving 
about and hiding in the grass by the 25th of June. The male birds danced 
close attendance upon our movements and showed every extravagance of 
solicitude; but the females merely looked in occasionally, once in ten 
minutes or such a matter, to see that their worser halves were giving 
proper attention to their duties in the nursery, and then returned, con¬ 
tent, to the distant club-room. One distraught father I nearly seized in 
his abandon of grief. Again and again he cast himself down in the grass 
and put on agonies both of distress and invitation, with tones varied to 
suit. His chief pose was to stand with head and breast depressed to the 
ground and with tail elevated so as to show the white underparts con¬ 
spicuously. At other times he would rise clear of the grass a-wing and fall 
back again and again as though quite exhausted. Withal he was such a pale, 
pathetic, and manifestly overworked household drudge that one felt quite 
ashamed to add to his burdens. The situation wrought upon the nerves. 
Here at the best was Topsy-Turvy Town; and a mere man, alone, and 
unattended, had fearful forebodings of what might befall him—in Cali¬ 
fornia. 
During the fall migration Wilson Phalaropes appear in considerable 
numbers about our southern ponds and brackish shallows. While they, 
too, resort to the surface of the water, they are rather more given to wad¬ 
ing or running about on shore, in company with Sandpipers. But one who 
1188 
Taken in Fresno County 
MR. WILSON AT CLOSE RANGE 
Photo by the Author 
