Life histories of North American shore birds, Part 1 (of 2)Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American shore birds, Part 1 (of 2)
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- Behavior; Shore birds -- North America
July 9, 1907, I again found a phalarope's nest by the Bjergandeso;
it contained four fresh eggs and was built a little differently
from the two before-mentioned nests. These were found close to a
lake on low banks covered with short grass, but this one was built
on a tuft covered with long, withered grass, situated some 10
meters from the real lake, but surrounded by shallow water, that
came from a little river running out from the lake and irrigating
all the tufts, one of which contained the nest. This bird also kept
very close on the nest, and did not leave it before I parted the
long grass with my foot. When frightened up from the nest the bird
for a short while lay screaming and flapping on the water not far
from me; thereupon he flew away, silently and rapidly, to land on
the opposite side of the lake. Having been absent for some five
minutes he returned just as rapidly, flew a good way to the other
side of the nest, sat down, and kept quiet for a couple of minutes,
whereafter he again flew up and took the earth some 20 meters from
the nest, which he then rapidly approached walking and swimming
hidden by aquatic plants and tufts. All this was done in order to
mislead me, who was lying some 15 meters from the nest without any
shelter and therefore seen by the bird all the while.
C. W. G. Eifrig (1905) found the red phalarope breeding very commonly
around Cape Fullerton and Southampton Island, Hudson Bay. "They nest
around fresh water ponds, laying their eggs, without nesting material,
in depressions in the sand or moss, often in lichens." John Murdoch
(1885), on the other hand, says, at Point Barrow, Alaska, that--
The nest is always in the grass, never in the black or mossy
portions of the tundra, and usually in a pretty wet situation,
though a nest was occasionally found high and dry, in a place where
the nest of the pectoral sandpiper would be looked for. A favorite
nesting site was a narrow grassy isthmus between two of the shallow
ponds. The nest is a very slight affair of dried grass and always
well concealed.
In the Kotzebue Sound region Joseph Grinnell (1900) found three nests,
of which he says:
The nests were all on higher ground and at a distance of 100 yards
or more from the lagoons where the birds usually congregated for
feeding and social purposes. The three nests agreed in situation,
being rather deep depressions sunk into the tops of mossy hummocks.
There was a thin lining of dry grasses, and in one case the
drooping blades from an adjoining clump of grass partially
concealed the nest from view from above.
Miss Maud D. Haviland (1915) relates her experience with the nesting
habits of this species, at the mouth of the Yenesei River, Siberia, as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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