Red-necked Phalarope

Surprise Visit From Red-necked Phalaropes

Red-necked Phalarope

 I was excited to recently find two phalaropes in a marsh off route 313 on Lameque Island just opposite to where the bay comes close to the road and where Pointe Alexandre meets Petite Lameque. They were actively feeding along with a mixed flock of about a dozen Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs.  I suspected these were rather rare birds so called local birders to come and share the sighting.  At first I was not sure whether they were Red-necked Phalaropes or Red Phalaropes.  After studying them in the scope and comparing the photos with field guides, the other birders and I confirmed they were Red-necked Phalaropes.  Being in alternate plumage can make it difficult.

Getting good photographs was a challenge.  The birds were very active, a normal behaviour for this species.  The road we were parked on was very busy and the wind was strong.  The birds were about 100 metres away.

Red-necked Phalaropes

There appeared to be a male and a female.  In this species the female has the most colourful breeding plumage.  In the photo above the female is on the left.

According to "Birds of New Brunswick: An Annotated List" the Red-necked Phalarope is uncommon in spring and common in the fall.  It is mostly seen around the Fundy Isles and Head Harbour Passage.  It is seen uncommonly off the Acadian Peninsula.  So, this was an uncommon find and indeed a life bird for one of the birders.

The Red-necked Phalarope breeds on tundra in the high Arctic islands, northern Canada, Greenland and Iceland.  It winters at sea in the Southern Hemisphere, off Peru.  It also winters off the southern Arabian Peninsula and Indonesia.  The only chance of seeing it here is during migration.

The phalarope is a small shorebird-looking bird (22 cm or 8.5 in long) that usually swims often in circles to stir up insects and other food.  In breeding plumage it shows gray, white, rufous red, black and beige.  In late summer and fall we see it in alternate plumage which is very different.  As you can see in the photos above it is white below with mottled gray and brown above.  The black line through the eye and the black cap which extends down the back of the neck are distinctive.  We could see remnants of the red and gray on the sides of the neck from the breeding plumage.  The back showed dark beige lines running parallel to the body length.  The bill was black and fine in diameter.

How did we decide these were Red-necked Phalaropes and not Red Phalaropes?  We ruled out Red Phalarope by the thin bill and the beige lines of colour on the back.  We could also see the remnants of colour on the neck of one of the birds.  We would have had trouble identifying these birds without a scope and, of course, it certainly helped to have 3 people making the determination.

An interesting fact about the phalaropes is that the female has the brighter plumage and the male incubates the eggs and cares for the young.  Another fact concerning population numbers is disturbing.  Up until the 1980s they were found in very large numbers (500,000) in August in Head Harbour Passage between Deer and Campobello Islands (Birds of New Brunswick: An Annotated List).  They have since abandoned the area (or the population is so low they no longer come here).  A species that in recent times was very numerous here is no longer seen except in very low numbers.  See the video below for the swimming behaviour of this species.