66 
WILSON’S PHALAROPE. 
to elucidate our figure, which represents of the natural size a 
beautiful female in the perfect plumage of spring. This indivi¬ 
dual was nine and a half inches long and sixteen in extent of 
wings. The form of the bill we have described above: it is 
black, and more than an inch and a quarter long, though only a 
line in thickness: the irides are dark brown. The upper part of 
the head is of a bluish delicate pale ash colour, the hind head and 
that part of the neck adjoining it are whitish; a white stripe 
passes over the eye, and beneath it is a spot of the same color: 
a large curving band of black includes the eye and spreads out 
towards the nucha, descending a good space down the neck, and 
gradually passes into a reddish brown, which becomes the color 
of the sides of the neck; this tint deepens into bright chestnut on 
the back part of the neck, and descends on each side, thus min¬ 
gling with the plumage of the back and scapulars, which are dark 
ash, each feather slightly tipped with whitish : the upper tail- 
coverts are ash color. The throat and sides of the head to the 
black mark, and all beneath, including the lower tail-coverts, are 
pure white, somewhat tinged with rufous on the lower part of the 
neck beneath. The wings are five inches long, and in color dark 
ash, larger coverts and secondaries very slightly edged with 
white, under coverts white, most of the smaller wing-coverts 
being marked with ferruginous: the upper tail feathers are 
tinged with reddish at their tips, and the under marked with 
white on their inner webs. The feet are dark plumbeous ; the 
claws of a dark horn color, the naked part of the tibia is nearly 
an inch long, the tarsus more than one inch and a quarter, 
and sharpish; the middle toe without the nail is scarcely one 
inch, and the remarkably long hind toe five sixteenths without 
the nail. 
There are fewer variations caused in this Phalarope than in the 
