WILSON'S PHALAROPE.
PHALAROPUS WILSONII, SABINE.
P L A T E C C L I V . MALE AND YOUNG.
THE habits of this beautiful species are little known, for so irregularly
does it perform its migrations, and so rarely does it settle for any length of
time in any part of the United States, that at present few opportunities of
studying them occur. Although I have found individuals in various places
along our eastern coast, from Boston to New Jersey, as well as in Kentucky
and other portions of the Union, I have not seen its nest, nor even
its eggs. Mr DRUMMOND, whose zeal as a student of nature must be
known to every one devoted to natural history, had the good fortune to
find its nest in the course of his rambles among the Rocky Mountains,
but he has given no information respecting its habits. A person who
shewed me the skins of two specimens procured in July near Cape May
in New Jersey, assured me that he shot them near their nests, and that
they had four eggs. While I was in the same neighbourhood, in the
month of June 1829, a fisherman gunner, with whom I was at the time
residing at Great Egg Harbour, brought me a pair which he had just
killed. He represented them as very gentle and easily approached, and
said that on going towards them they affected to be lame, and opened
their wings as if to induce him to run after them ; instead of doing which,
however, he immediately fired and killed them both. Having put away
the birds in a safe place, he and I took to his boat and went to the island
where he had found them. He shewed me the spot on which they had
been shot; but although we searched most diligently for the nest, we
could not find it. On examining the birds when we returned, I saw that
the female must have been sitting. About the same period my son procured
two specimens of this Phalarope out of a flock of five, on the rocks
at the rapids of the Ohio below Louisville. Late in the summer of 1824
I shot three of them near Buffalo Creek on Lake Erie. My generous
friend EDWARD HARRIS, Esq. presented me, at New York, with a youngbird
in autumnal plumage, from which I made the figure in the plate;
and another, in a most emaciated state, was given me at Boston in the
winter by my young friend JOHN BETHUNK, Esq.
Those which I procured near Lake Erie were engaged in feeding
around the borders and in the shallows of a pond of small extent. When
I first observed them at some distance, I thought they were Yellow-shanks
(Totanus jlavipes), so much did their motions resemble those of that species.
Like it, this Phalarope wades in the water up to its body, picks for
food right and left, turns about, and performs all its motions with vivacity
and elegance. They kept closer together than the Yellow-shanks
usually do, but, like them, they would for a few moments raise their wings
as if apprehensive of getting into too deep water and being obliged to fly.
They preferred flying to swimming on such occasions, although from the
general character of the tribe one might expect otherwise. After watching
them about a quarter of an hour, during which time they did not utter
a single note, I fired at them when they were all close together, and killed
the whole. On opening them I found their stomachs to contain small
worms and fragments of very delicate shells. The birds seen at the Falls
of the Ohio flew in the manner of the Common Snipe, proceeding at first
in an undulating or zigzag line, but more steadily after reaching a certain
elevation, when they came pretty close together, wheeled a few times, and
alighted again near the same shallow pools.
Or RICHARDSON, who found this species breeding on the Saskatchewan,
says " it lays two or three eggs among the grass on the margins of small
lakes: they are very obtuse at one end, taper much at the other, and have
a colour intermediate between yellowish-grey and cream-yellow, interspersed
with small roundish spots and a few larger blotches of umberbrown,
more crowded at the obtuse end. The eggs measure sixteen lines
and a half in length and eleven across."
I observed scarcely any difference in the colouring of the sexes, the
female being merely larger than the male.
PHALAROPUS WILSONII, Ch. Bonaparte, Synopsis of Birds of the United States, p. 342.
GRAY PHALAROPE, PHALAROPUS LOBATUS, Wils. Amer. Ornith. vol. ix. p. 72. pi. 7 3 .
fig. 2.
WILSON'S PHALAROPE, PHALAROPUS WILSONII, Ch. Bonaparte, Amer. Ornith. vol. iv.
p. 59. pi. 24. fig. 1. Adult; and pi. 25. fig. 1. Young.
PHALAROPUS WILSONII, WILSON'S PHALAROPE, Sicains. and Richards, Fauna Bor.
Amer. part ii. p. 405, pi. 69.
AMERICAN PHALAROPE, Nuttall, Manual, vol. ii. p. 245.
Adult Male. Plate CCLIV. Fig. 1.
Bill long, very slender, flexible, flattened towards the end. Upper
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