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Behavior of Northern Phalarope with Young

Leon J. Cole

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Behavior of Northern Phalarope with Young.-Saturday, July 12, 1941, on St. Paul Island of the Pribilof group was characteristically dull and misty with a cold northerly wind. Driving along the road leading toward North East Point, we noticed over a couple of small ponds, known locally as the Cup and Saucer, a half dozen or so small birds darting about with almost swallow-like tlight. These proved to be Northern Phalaropes (Lobipes lobatus), and a little search disclosed a young one in the short sedges along the shore of the larger pond. It was a tiny ball of tawny and black down with absurdly long black toothpicks of legs; it could not have been more than a day or two old. No other young was seen. The brighter parent, and hence presumably the female though it appeared somewhat the smaller of the two, showed great solicitude and hovered two feet above the outstretched hand if the young one was held out in it. When the hand was lowered to the ground, the parent would venture at times within a foot of it and continually hovered within four to six feet, only occasionally making a short flight farther away. It was surprising that the parent could hover almost in the same spot for several moments, almost like a hummingbird at a flower.

When the youngster was released at the edge of the water, the parent piloted it, swimming bravely over the wavelets, to a small sloping rock and at once settled down on the little fellow contentedly, although only about three feet from the whirring camera of my companion, Mr. Ben East of the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press. The adult seemed to realize that the vounester might be chilled by the cold wind, and‘after warming it up a bit led it off, although not ai all h;rriedly~ through the vegetation along shore. Furthermore, when we returned in the afternoon with Mr. Eugene Stitt, mate of the Pengtia, who also dealred to get some pictures, we had no diiculty in finding the old bird with her young one at the same place and in getting them to repeat their performance, to be preserved on Kodachrome film.

* The Northern Phalarope is reported to breed regularly in small numbers on the Pribilof Islands, Alaska. Young birds have been seen on several occasions, although apparently no nests with eggs have been reported.-LxoN J. COLE, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, November 5,1942.

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