_Spring._--The migrations of the red phalarope are mainly at sea, usually far out from land. During the month of May enormous flocks may be seen on the ocean off the coasts of New England, but it is only during stress of weather that they are driven inshore. I can well remember a big storm, on May 21, 1892, which brought a large flight of these birds into Cape Cod Bay; Nat Gould killed a large number that day on Monomoy Island and I shot one at Plymouth Beach; others were taken at Provincetown. In pleasant weather these birds are well at home on the heaving bosom of the ocean, flying about in flocks, twisting, turning, and wheeling like flocks of sandpipers, or resting or feeding on the drifting rafts of seaweeds. On the Pacific coast these birds are even more abundant, if one goes far enough offshore to see them during April and May. They often congregate in considerable numbers about the Farallon Islands. W. Leon Dawson (1923) has drawn a graphic picture of them there, as follows: Here in late spring thousands of these birds ride at anchor in the lee of the main island, along with other thousands of the other northern species, _Lobipes lobatus_. Of these some few scores are driven ashore by hunger and seek their sustenance in brackish pools, or else battle with the breakers in the little "bight" of the rocky lee shore. The date is May 23, and the company under survey numbers a few brilliant red birds in high plumage among the scores in unchanged gray, together with others exhibiting every intermediate gradation. When to this variety is added a similar diversity among the northerns, which mingle indiscriminately with them, you have a motley company--no two birds alike. Ho! but these are agile surfmen! Never, save in the case of the wandering tattler and the American dipper, have I seen such absolute disregard of danger and such instant adjustment to watery circumstance. Here are 30 of these phalaropes "fine mixed," threading a narrow passage in the reefs where danger threatens in the minutest fraction of a second. Crash! comes a comber. Our little world is obliterated in foam. Sea anemones and rock oysters sputter and choke, and there is a fine fury of readjustment. But the phalaropes rise automatically, clear the crest of the crasher, and are down again, preening their feathers or snatching dainties with the utmost unconcern. Now a bird is left stranded on a reef, or now he is whisked and whirled a dozen feet away. All right, if he likes it; but if not, he is back again, automatically, at the old rendezvous. Life goes on right merrily in spite of these shocking interruptions. Food getting is the main business, and this is pursued with extraordinary ardor. The bird's tiny feet kick the water violently, and there is the tiniest compensatory bob for every stroke, so that their little