The two phalaropes observed were evidently very much afraid of larger waders as for instance knots. Several times I saw them rush together in terror and lie motionless on the water with their heads pressed down to their backs until the supposed danger--a passing knot--was past; then they continued their meal or love-making. The only enemy of the full-grown birds is the gyrfalcon (_Falco gyrfalco_), which will surprise and capture them when lying on the water. This I succeeded in observing one day in summer 1907; just as I was observing a male phalarope, which swam along the beach of a little clear pond hardly two paces from my feet, I suddenly heard a strong whistling in the air and saw an old falcon, that from a dizzy height shot like an arrow towards the surface of the water, caught the phalarope and again rapidly rose in the air carrying the bird in its talons. I saw the bird of prey descend and settle on the summit of a rock near the bay in order to eat its prey. The method, with which the falcon carried out its exploit, proved that several phalaropes before had the same fate. The gyrfalcon can certainly not catch a phalarope in flight. Nature, however, sometimes takes her toll, as the following observation on the coast of California reported by L. W. Welch (1922) will illustrate: There was an unusual migration of red phalaropes (_Phalaropus fulicarius_) this past fall. I saw about three hundred within an hour on the ponds of the Long Beach Salt Works. This was October 30. There was a great mortality among them this year. Dead birds were brought to the schools picked up by children in the streets or elsewhere. On the ponds mentioned above, dead birds were washed up in windrows. I could count 19 from one position and 21 from another. I counted 75 within half an hour. The birds had no shot holes in them, and showed no external evidences of having flown against wires, but all the birds examined were emaciated in the extreme. Mr. Brandt in his manuscript notes writes: