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Among those able to hold their own, with proper encouragement, are the following: two loons, two murres, the puffin, guillemot, razor-billed auk, dovekie and pomarine jæger; six gulls ivory, kittiwake, glaucous, great black-back, herring and Bonaparte; two terns arctic and common; the fulmar, two shearwaters, two cormorants, the red-breasted merganser and the gannet; seven ducks the black, golden-eye, old squaw and harlequin, with the American, king and Greenland eiders; three scoters; four geese snow, blue, brant and Canada; two phalaropes, several sandpipers, with the Hudsonian godwit and both yellowlegs; two snipes; five plovers; and the Eskimo and Hudsonian curlews.
And now the tide rolled south over shelving, sandy shores, past countless islands yellowing to the touch of September frosts, and silent as death but for the cries of gull, tern, bittern, the hooting piebald loon, match-legged phalaropes, and geese and ducks of every hue, collected for the autumnal flight south.
We love the brave fellow, remembering him in his home among the lakes of Canada; but we tremble for him when we think of the terrible storm waves which he must outride, and the sneering sharks which must sometimes spy him. What a story he could tell of his life among the phalaropes and jelly-fishes!
After a breakfast of stewed phalaropes, whose tender, plover-like flesh was a pleasing change from the hitherto almost unvaried roast sea-fowl diet of the last week, the boat was drawn out upon the level platform near the hut, and removing her side and covering boards, the party held a survey of their only resource in case of a breaking up of the ice.
When some sheltered spot in the ground, quite to her liking, has been found she deposits the eggs and goes her way. Little companies of female Phalaropes may be seen at this time of the year frequenting the ponds and sloughs they inhabit. The dutiful and well-trained males are all at home, where they are responsible for the entire task of caring for, and incubating, the eggs.
The hills here are partly wooded and in the valleys nestle lakes literally black with wild-fowl bittern that rise heavy-winged and furry with a boo-m-m; grey geese holding political caucus with raucous screeching of the honking ganders; black duck and mallard and teal; inland gulls white as snow and fearless of hunters; little match-legged phalaropes fishing gnats from the wet sand.
Sand-pipers inhabit various parts of the world, and, like the ibises, love the neighbourhood of water, where they seek the food congenial to them. The Phalaropes, which are also represented in this case, are natives of the eternal ice of the arctic regions, where they subsist upon crustacea.
Shorebirds perform an important service by their inroads upon mosquitoes, some of which play so conspicuous a part in the dissemination of diseases. Thus, nine species are known to feed upon mosquitoes, and hundreds of the larvae or "wigglers" were found in several stomachs. Fifty-three per cent of the food of twenty-eight northern phalaropes from one locality consisted of mosquito larvae.
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